USA Africa Dialogue Series - Sub-Saharan Africa’s material cultural legacy is kept outside of

Up to 90% of Sub-Saharan Africa's material cultural legacy is kept outside of the continent, according to a French government-commissioned 2018 report by Senegalese economist Felwine Sarr and French historian Bénédicte Savoy.1

Amongst the top-ranking Museums in Europe, the Musée Royale de l'Afrique Centrale in Belgium comes first, with an estimated 180,000 African artifacts in its possession. This is followed by Humboldt Forum in Germany with 75,000 artifacts; the Musée du Quai Branly Jacques Chirac in France with 70,000; the British Museum with 69,000; and the Weltmuseum of Vienna in Austria, which holds about 37,000 African artifacts.

These collections dwarf the inventories of virtually all African museums. The report cites Alain Godonou, a specialist in African museums, who observed that "with certain rare exceptions, the inventories of the national museums in Africa itself hardly ever exceeded 3,000 cultural heritage objects and most of them had little importance or significance."

According to Gus Casely-Hayford, the former director of the Smithsonian Museum of African Art and current director of the V&A East museum:

"If you look at a collection, whether Quai Branly or whether it's the British Museum or whether it's the Smithsonian, any single one of those institutions has more in terms of significant objects than the whole of the collection of museums across sub-Saharan Africa combined – any single one of them."

https://www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/online-resources-for-african-history

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