Open Restitution Africa’s digital resource based on pan-continental research counters elevation of Western narratives
Chao Tayiana Maina, the Kenyan historian and cultural strategist Molemo Moiloa are the co-founders of Open Restitution Africa (ORA). Maina points out the tendency to elevate Western narratives. “If France decides to give ten objects out of 50,000,” she says, “it is positioned as a remarkable thing when essentially there’s still a lot of injustice going on.”
ORA, billed as “the leading pan-African initiative dedicated to aggregating and disseminating information on the restitution of African belongings and human ancestors”, was established in 2020. Maina and Moiloa had met a year beforehand, having noticed that the materials shared at conferences on African museums and the restitution of African artefacts were unavailable online.
In 2023 ORA published an analysis of online data, especially from academic sources, that found that African scholars were often quoted less compared to their Western counterparts even on the subject of restitution in Africa.
Later this year, ORA will launch the platform’s second stage to help users “curate [their] own understanding of restitution”. A user will be able to sort data, for example, on restitution from a particular country or on objects that have been returned, and show timelines or progress in restitution efforts. Workshops and conferences will be held to further activate the platform.
More information about ORA
