GIVING BACK. The restitution of African cultural assets

RETURN
The restitution of African cultural assets

Bénédicte Savoy, Professor at the Collège de France, Paris and at the Technical University of Berlin
Christian Schicklgruber, Director of the Weltmuseum Wien
Kwame Opoku, Ghana, former legal advisor to the UN in Vienna

Moderation Georg Lennkh, Member of the board, Kreisky Forum, CARE Austria, former Austrian Special Envoy for Africa

The return of African cultural assets has been an issue in European-African relations for decades. There have been repeated declarations at UNESCO or at meetings between the EU and Africa and in their joint strategy, but no concrete steps have ever been taken.
The situation only changed when French President Macron declared in a speech to students in Ouagadougou in November 2017 that African cultural assets should be returned or given back. Macron subsequently commissioned a specially created commission to present a report on this topic, which was finalised in November 2018 and presented to the French president (‚Rapport sur la restitution du patrimoine africain‘). This text was also published in Paris in November 2018 under the title ‚Restituer le patrimoine africain‘ and in German in June 2019 under the title ‚Zurückgeben. Title ‘Zurückgeben. On the restitution of African cultural property'. Bénédicte Savoy led this commission together with Felwine Sarr (Professor at the University of Saint Louis, Senegal). The Austrian Weltmuseum Wien, which also has African cultural artefacts in its collections, has already been involved in coordinated contacts between European museums.
Kwame Opoku, a recognised expert on the subject, has provided his own text on the subject.