Academia
African Voices Archive
Prof. Zacharys Anger Gundu
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Prof. Wazi Apoh
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Dr. Charles Saanane
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Professor Zacharys Anger Gundu teaches archaeology at the Ahmadu Bello University and is a distinguished Senior Fulbright Scholar. He also sat on the Council of the World Archaeological Congress (WAC) between 2013 and 2016 and was Vice President of the Pan African Association of Prehistory and Related Studies from 2014-2018. He also served as the Secretary of the Archaeological Association of Nigeria (AAN) between 198 and 1992 and was President of the Association between 2010 and 2018. He is Editor of the Journal of Nigerian Field Archaeology. He is also a Fellow of the Archaeological Association of Nigeria and a Fellow of the Institute of Management Consultants (Nigeria). Prof. Gundu is currently Pro-Chancellor and Chairman Governing Council of the Benue State University, Makurdi. Nigeria.
Affiliation(s): Ahmadu Bello University, Benue State University - Makurdi, Archaeological Association of Nigeria
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Published Work: Looted Nigerian Heritage – an Interrogatory Discourse around Repatriation
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Wazi Apoh is Dean of the School of Arts and Associate Professor at the Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies, University of Ghana. He specializes in the Archaeology of Colonization & Missionization in Togoland; the Archaeology of Gonjaland, Climate Change and Salvage Archaeology; the Archaeology of Slavery in Southeastern Ghana as well as on Issues of Restitution and Repatriation of Colonially Looted African Objects/remains
Affiliation(s): University of Ghana
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Published Work: Mainstreaming the Discourse on Restitution and Repatriation within African History, Heritage Studies and Political Science
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Achille Mbembe is currently Research Professor at WiSER, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Today, Achille Mbembe figures as the most renown philosopher, political theorist, and public intellectual of the African continent and won several outstanding prizes. His most important works are: Les jeunes et l’ordre politique en Afrique noire (1985) ; La naissance du maquis dans le Sud-Cameroun (1920-1960); Histoire des usages de la raison en colonie (1996); De la postcolonie. Essai sur l’imagination politique dans l’Afrique contemporaine (2000); Sortir de la grande nuit : Essai sur l’Afrique décolonisée (2003); Critique de la raison nègre (2013); Politique de l’inimitié (2016). Most of his books have been translated into English and German.
Affiliation(s): University of the Wiwatersrand
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Published Work: The Capacity for Truth: Of “Restitution” in African Systems of Thought
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Kodzo Gavua is an archaeologist and ethnographer who holds a PhD and a Master of Arts degrees from the University of Calgary, Canada. He also earned a Master of Arts degree in International Affairs and a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) degree in Archaeology and Philosophy from the University of Ghana. Kodzo serves as an Associate Professor of Archaeology and Heritage Studies at the University of Ghana, Legon, and researches the effects of cross-cultural interactions on Africa’s cultural heritage and economic development. He engages in public archaeology, anthropology of tourism, economic anthropology, art history, material culture studies, and museum studies. Gavua established and coordinates the A.G. Leventis Digital Resource Centre for African Culture at the University of Ghana.
Affiliation(s): University of Ghana - Legon, Ghana Focal Team on Restitution and Reparation
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The late Prince Folarin Shyllon (23 July 1940 - 13 January 2021) is the most prolific thinker and writer on restitution matters from the continent, dedicating much of his professional life to international work on the matter. He was the foundation Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Ibadan. His dedication to the promotion of the protection of cultural heritage and its return to countries of origin was embodied in his tireless work in regional and international organizations. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization acknowledged his unflinching contribution to its work for decades and the progressive development of international cultural heritage law.
Affiliation(s): University of Ibadan
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Published Work: Legislative and Administrative Implementation of the 1970 UNESCO Convention by African States: The Failure to Grasp the Nettle
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Peju Layiwola is a visual artist and art historian with an active studio practice, as well as a strong commitment to research. She has had several art exhibitions locally and internationally. Her most recent travelling exhibition and edited book, entitled Benin1897.com: Art and the Restitution Question, is an artistic exploration of the Benin/British encounter of 1897. She has published several articles on the visual culture of Nigeria. Presently, she is associate professor and head of the Department of Creative Arts at the University of Lagos, Nigeria where she teaches art history. She follows in the footsteps of her mother, Princess Elizabeth Olowu, daughter of HRM, Oba Akenzua II of Benin, in a career in art, adding art history to her intellectual portfolio during her graduate studies.
Affiliation(s): University of Lagos
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Published Work: Making Meaning from a Fragmented Past: 1897 and the Creative Process
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Emery Effiboley is an art historian with more than a decade-long experience in African arts. As an A. W. Mellon Postdoctoral Research Fellow, he spent two years (2014-2016) at the Centre for the Creative Arts of Africa (University of the Witwatersrand) in South Africa. He is currently Assistant Professor at Université d’Abomey-Calavi, where he teaches at the undergraduate level. He has also authored several articles and book chapters on African arts from an African perspective.
Affiliation(s): University of Abomey-Calavi, University of the Witwatersrand
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Published Work: Reflections on the Issue of Repatriation of Looted and Illegally Acquired African Cultural Objects in Western Museums
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Ekpo Okpo Eyo (8 July 1931 – 28 May 2011) is a pre-eminent name to know when looking to understand the intersection of heritage, restitution, independence and society in Africa. He was a Nigerian scholar mostly known for his work on the archeology of Nigeria. He worked at the interface of archeology, anthropology, and art history, and he was actively involved in and spent many years presiding the federal and national agencies of antiquities and museums in Nigeria. He has been described as a 'giant pillar of Nigeria's museums'. Ekpo Eyo served on UNESCO’s Committee on the creation of the Convention on the Illicit Transfer of Cultural Property (1970) and the Preservation of World Cultural Property (1974).
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Published Work: Primitivism and Other Misconceptions of African Art, April 1982
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Dr. Charles Saanane is a founding and Executive Committee member of Eastern African Association for Palaeoanthropologists and Palaeontologists (EAPP). He served the Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies, University of Dar es Salaam as an academic staff member for over 20 years, and is currently an adjunct fellow in Department of Archaeology and History, University of Dodoma. His areas of specialization include History, Archaeology, and Palaeontology. In 1998, with the support of Goethe Institut in Dar-es-Salaam, he co-authored a booklet for young readers on natural history, focussing on the discovery and subsequent excavations of dinosaur fossils at Tendaguru hill in Lindi Region of South Eastern Tanzania. It was written in the country’s official language, Kiswahili.
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Published Work: Dinosaria Wa Tendaguru
