FRANCE APPROVES RETURN OF COLONIAL-ERA ‘TALKING DRUM’ TO CÔTE D’IVOIRE

Tue 08 July 2025:

On Monday, France’s parliament authorized the return of a “talking drum,” seized by colonial forces from the Ebrie tribe in Côte d’Ivoire in 1916, marking another step in repatriating colonial artifacts.

The Djidji Ayokwe drum, a massive communication instrument over three meters long and weighing 430 kilograms, was used to send messages across regions, such as alerts about forced recruitment campaigns.

The lower house of the French parliament approved separating out the artefact from national museum collections to enable its return, after the upper-house Senate backed the move in April.

In 2018, Côte d’Ivoire officially asked Paris to return 148 works of art taken during the colonial period, including the Djidji Ayokwe.

Le tambour Djidji Ayokwê, divinité bientôt de retour en Côte d'Ivoire - Afrique, mémoires d'un continent

‘Our loudspeaker, Facebook’

President Emmanuel Macron promised to send the drum and other artefacts back home to the West African country in 2021.

Clavaire Aguego Mobio, leader of the Ebrie, at the time called Macron’s pledge “a highly historic move.”

He told AFP that his people had long given up on the return of the drum, “which was our loudspeaker, our Facebook”.

Since his election in 2017, Macron has gone further than his predecessors in admitting to past French abuses in Africa.

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The restitution of looted artworks to Africa is one of the highlights of the “new relationship” he wanted to establish with the continent.

France holds about 90,000 African artifacts, mostly looted during colonial rule from the 19th to mid-20th centuries, with 70,000 in Paris’ Quai Branly Museum alone. These include sacred objects like the Djidji Ayokwe drum from Côte d’Ivoire, taken in 1916, and 26 treasures from Benin’s Abomey Palace, looted in 1892.

A 2018 report by Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy, commissioned by President Macron, estimated 90% of Africa’s cultural heritage is outside the continent and recommended returning items taken without consent. France has since returned the Djidji drum and 26 Benin artifacts in 2021, but critics, including filmmaker Mati Diop, argue the pace is slow, with tens of thousands still held.

Repatriation faces legal hurdles, as French law treats these as state property, requiring parliamentary approval for each return. The debate reflects broader calls to address colonial legacies, with other nations like Germany and Belgium also starting restitutions.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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