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Sylvain Djache Nzefa is a Cameroonian architect and curator, with strong ties to France. At the age of 19, he left to pursue his university studies in architecture in France. He arrived in Nantes in 1986 and obtained his architecture degree in 1992. Towards the latter years of his degree he became interested in traditional African architecture, in particular that of Cameroon. He continued to reside in France, and in 1997, he held the position of Deputy Mayor of Nantes for International Relations. More recently, Nzefa has served as the General Coordinator Routes Des Cheffries (RDC); a cultural organization specializing in heritage engineering in Cameroon and around the world. Created in 2012 following the success of the eponymous program, it is today at the origin of a network of more than of 26 museums, distributed in several regions of Cameroon. Its leadership and members are involved in cultural and tourist development programs of the territory, major museum projects, training and strengthening the employability of young people in the cultural field, or international exhibitions. Their main focus is on chiefdoms where tradition and creativity nourish each other to remain vibrant; and on heritage sites (community museums) that focus not on objects but rather on their uses; and to ritual practices that pave the way for spiritual cultivation. In 2022, Nzefa curated ""On the Road to the Chiefdoms of Cameroon: From the Visible to the Invisible,"" at the Musée du quai Branly in Paris. The exhibition The exhibition is celebrated as made a major event in Cameroon's cultural history, with its 250 exhibited works and nearly 230,000 visitors .
Affiliation(s): Routes des Chefferies
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Published Work: La sauvegarde et la valorisation du patrimoine culturel au Cameroun
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Hervé Youmbi is one of Cameroon’s most acclaimed and internationally prominent artists. His work broadly explores the reception and commodification of African art forms in the global contemporary art world, in international markets for “traditional” African art, and in local Grassfields communities of Western Cameroon. He attended Cameroon’s only dedicated art school at the time, IFA (Institut de Formation Artistique) (1993-96), studying art theory and installation art, which he later pursued, through both practice and research, in France at ESAD (Ecole Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs de Strasbourg, renamed Haute Ecole des Arts du Rhin). While there, he produced his first video work (2000-2001). While Youmbi’s studio is in Douala, his research-centric artistic practice routinely takes him to the Grassfields to participate in ceremonies and collaborate with the sculptors, beaders, and ritual specialists, whose work he supports and integrates into his own. Juxtaposing indigenous African art traditions with contemporary global art conventions to destabilize the dichotomy is a key strategy of Youmbi ‘s series “Visages des Masques/Faces of Masks”. A departure point is to create and insert mask forms that diverge from the Western stereotypes of “African Art” for this region of Cameroon into local “traditional” Bamileke ritual performances, thus embodying these “foreign” forms with efficacy and making them authentic to the Bamileke context. Youmbi’s “Les Trônes Célestes” is an installation of beaded caryatid thrones “traditional” for rulers of the Cameroon Grasslands, each seat of power supported by an animal traditionally symbolic of idealized leadership—except for the tortoise that Youmbi has slyly inserted here to suggest that the deliberate creature might better epitomize leadership than, say, the leopard, a stealthy killer. Inscribed in reverse in the beading underneath each stool is a Cameroonian proverb about leadership, which would be invisible and illegible except for the fact that Youmbi suspends the stools above glass mirrors so that the truth they bespeak can be read by all. The fragility of ideals of stewardship hang in the balance of the framework that Youmbi has constructed. Hervé Youmbi has ceremonially gifted most of these thrones to Cameroonian kings, so if and when they are exhibited as art works, it is necessary for the venue to become involved in diplomatic arrangements with the Cameroonian rulers. Notions of circulation run through Youmbi’s work. By traveling sculptural works that have been ritually enacted in “the field” in Cameroon into art galleries and museums, and making allowance for them to return to the “field” afterward if their new owners desire, he challenges the permanence and function of art works in museums, and breaks the dichotomy between African “classical art” and “contemporary art.” Bamileke communities participating in Youmbi’s projects have awarded him with honorific titles for his support of local institutions. Hervé Youmbi also is one of the original five founding members of Cercle Kapsiki, a Cameroonian artist group established in 1998 that endeavors to enrich art education and programming in the country through artist-to-artist networks, exhibitions, residencies, and international commissions. The K Factory, the collective’s home, based in New Bell, one of the poorest but also one of the most dynamic districts of Douala, is a flexible space, experimental and open to a wide range of collaborations. Hervé Youmbi has been hosted on several artist residencies, which have facilitated his research of historical African art in European and American museum collections. Listed below are a selection of his numerous international exhibitions and public collections showing his work.
Affiliation(s): Cercle Kapsiki The K Factory
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Published Work: Visages de Masques / Faces of Masks; New African Masquerades: Artistic Innovations and Collaborations
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Olugbile Holloway is the current Director-General of the National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM). He holds a BA in Politics and International Relations from the University of Kent, and an MBA from the University of Buckingham. He also received training in Psychotherapy from the Human Givens College. These learning experience shaped Holloway's profound understanding of human and consumer behavior and how this behavior has the power to shape and influence narratives. He applied this acumen to the advertising and marketing sector, which he served in for over a decade. His appointment to the NCMM is intended to bolster strategy, innovation and excellence. As the newly appointed Director of the NCMM, Holloway oversaw the return of 119 Benin Bronzes from the Netherlands - the largest single return of Benin belongings to date. In 2025, he also entered into a five year agreement with the Oba of Benin, for NCMM to manage returned Benin Bronzes on the Oba's behalf. He is committed to sustainably raising funds through local contributions, and offering support through staffing for royal museums.
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Tunde Babawale is a political scientist and cultural advocate. He is a Professor of Political Economy at the University of Lagos, Nigeria, and the former Provost, Anti-Corruption Academy of Nigeria (ACAN) Abuja; the training and research arm of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC). Babawale is a graduate of the University of Ife, Ile-Ife. He began his professional career as a teacher at a government secondary school in Adamawa State. In 1985, Adeyemi College Campus of Obafemi Awolowo University employed Babawale as an Assistant Lecturer. He speedily rose through academic ranks, and by 2002, he was appointed as a Professor of Political Science at the University of Lagos (UNILAG). He also spent over two decades educating undergraduate and postgraduate students in UNILAG's Department of Political Science, and was the founding and managing editor of the reputable UNILAG Journal of Politics up until 2006. In 2006 he was appointed as the Director General of the Centre for African and Black Arts and Civilization. He was mandated to restructure and reposition the institution as a space for the advocacy and promotion of culture as a driver of socio-economic development in Nigeria. During his tenure, he managed to transform the center into a world-class arts and culture agency. The centre organised and hosted 8 international conferences for experts on Africa, and African Diaspora studies both within and outside Nigeria, and served as a vibrant hub for public dialogues concerning the restitution of Nigeria's cultural heritage. Babawale is a prolific author who has contributed over one hundred and twenty (120) papers to learned local and international journals, international conference proceedings, and technical papers. He is also a member of many learned and academic associations and societies, including the Nigerian Political Science Association, the Historical Society of Nigeria, and the Third World Forum.
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Idle Farah is a primatologist with a Ph.D. from Uppsala University, Sweden. Prior to becoming the Director-General of the National Museums of Kenya (NMK) he was the director of the Institute of Primate Research in Kenya. He is also chairman of the board of the Centre of Heritage Development in Africa (formerly the Programme for Museum Development in Africa - PMDA). Following EU funded upgrades to Nairobi Museum in the mid-2000s, which sought to challenge the notion of Africa's readiness for restitution, Farah diplomatically campaigned for the return of Kenyan belongings from USA and Europe. He announced plans to create an inventory, and allayed Western fears of empty museums by stating that ""only the most important ones must come home"".
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Dr Pastory Magayane Bushozi is the Director of Humanities Research Centre and a Senior in the Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. He is also a country representative to the Committee of the Eastern Africa Quaternary Research Association (EAQUA), and the Association of Southern Africa Paleontologists and Archaeologists (ASAPA). Dr Bushozi’s research focus on Human evolution, Lithic technology, Paleoecology and Heritage Management. He is interested on Quaternary human landscape for the past 2.6 million years. He tries to pursue research that focuses on influence of environmental changes to human evolution, cultural transformations and technological developments. He interested to understand when hominins had the cognitive ability to make objects that are more than just functional tools to butcher carcases, but something, which communicates the dreams and thoughts of toolmaker to others an act that differentiate humans with other hominins. Academically, Dr Bushozi holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada and a B.A in Archaeology and environmental studies and M.A in Archaeology from the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. He has researched and written extensively on the trend of human biological and cultural evolution, looking on inclination related to subsistence behavior, diet preference, technological innovations,human adaptation to the over changing environment as well as sustainable cultural heritage management and conservation.
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Professor Oswald Masebo is a prominent academic in the field of heritage, museums and German-Tanzanian relations, and a Senior Lecturer in the History Department at the University of Dar es Salaam. His publications focus on African history and the history of medicine and Tanzanian experiences of the First World War. He is the president of the Historical Association of Tanzania.
Affiliation(s): University of Dar es Salaam
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Published Work: Epistemologische Leerstellen in den verflochtenen Geschichten Tansanias und Deutschlands
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Dr. Martha Akawa-Shikufa is a histrorian and educator who currently heads up the Department of Geography, History and Environmental Studies at the University of Namibia in Windhoek. She holds a holds PhD in History from the University of Basel, a Master's in Anthropology and Diploma in Heritage and Museum Studies from the University of the Western Cape, and a Bachelor’s degree in education from the University of Namibia. She possess a vast knowledge and experience of Namibian History, and is particularly interested in the liberation struggle of Namibia, gender and heritage relates issues. In 2014, she, along with Dr. Jeremy Silvester conceptualised >>Africa Accessioned<<, a multi-nation project that sought to build networks between museums in four African countries (Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe) held in museums in four European countries (Finland, Germany, Sweden and the UK). This project yielded a handful of returns, and formed the foundation for the first restitution project in Namibia - Confronting Colonial Pasts, Envisioning Creative Futures.
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Kofi Annan (8 April 1938 - 18 August 2018) was a Ghanaian diplomat and statesman. He served as the the 7th Secretary-General of the United Nations (January 1997 to December 2006) and was the founder and chair of the Kofi Annan Foundation. In 2001, he and the United Nations (UN) were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. Kofi Annan joined the UN system in 1962 as an administrative and budget officer with the World Health Organization in Geneva.He later served with the Economic Commission for Africa in Addis Ababa, the UN Emergency Force (UNEF II) in Ismailia, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva, and in various senior posts in New York dealing with human resources, budget, finance, and staff security. Immediately before becoming Secretary-General, he was Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping. As Secretary-General of the UN he was a constant advocate for human rights, the rule of law, the Millennium Development Goals and Africa, and sought to bring the organisation closer to the global public by forging ties with civil society, the private sector and other partners. During his tenure he created the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, adopted UN’s first-ever counter-terrorism strategy, and encouraged Member States to embrace their inherent “responsibility to protect” people from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. His hands-on diplomatic approach resulted in him intervening personally in matters of global discord. In the 1990s, racial tensions were triggered over the display of an African man's remains in a Spanish museum. Annan directly and repeatedly engaged with the Mayor of Banyoles and the curator of Darder Museum of Nature and Science to ensure that the dignity of the person derogatorily known as El Negro de Banyoles was restored, through the return and reburial of his remains in African soil. This became one of the first human ancestor return cases on the continent. In his latter years, Annan Mr. Annan became the founding Chairman of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), which works for a food secure and prosperous Africa by promoting rapid, sustainable agricultural growth based on smallholder farmers. He also chaired the African Progress Panel until the end of 2017, which advocated at the highest level for equitable and sustainable development in Africa. He was a member of The Elders, an independent group of global leaders who work together for peace and human rights, and in 2013 was appointed its Chair.
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Hervé Youmbi is one of Cameroon’s most acclaimed and internationally prominent artists. His work broadly explores the reception and commodification of African art forms in the global contemporary art world, in international markets for “traditional” African art, and in local Grassfields communities of Western Cameroon. He attended Cameroon’s only dedicated art school at the time, IFA (Institut de Formation Artistique) (1993-96), studying art theory and installation art, which he later pursued, through both practice and research, in France at ESAD (Ecole Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs de Strasbourg, renamed Haute Ecole des Arts du Rhin). While there, he produced his first video work (2000-2001). While Youmbi’s studio is in Douala, his research-centric artistic practice routinely takes him to the Grassfields to participate in ceremonies and collaborate with the sculptors, beaders, and ritual specialists, whose work he supports and integrates into his own. Juxtaposing indigenous African art traditions with contemporary global art conventions to destabilize the dichotomy is a key strategy of Youmbi ‘s series “Visages des Masques/Faces of Masks”. A departure point is to create and insert mask forms that diverge from the Western stereotypes of “African Art” for this region of Cameroon into local “traditional” Bamileke ritual performances, thus embodying these “foreign” forms with efficacy and making them authentic to the Bamileke context. Youmbi’s “Les Trônes Célestes” is an installation of beaded caryatid thrones “traditional” for rulers of the Cameroon Grasslands, each seat of power supported by an animal traditionally symbolic of idealized leadership—except for the tortoise that Youmbi has slyly inserted here to suggest that the deliberate creature might better epitomize leadership than, say, the leopard, a stealthy killer. Inscribed in reverse in the beading underneath each stool is a Cameroonian proverb about leadership, which would be invisible and illegible except for the fact that Youmbi suspends the stools above glass mirrors so that the truth they bespeak can be read by all. The fragility of ideals of stewardship hang in the balance of the framework that Youmbi has constructed. Hervé Youmbi has ceremonially gifted most of these thrones to Cameroonian kings, so if and when they are exhibited as art works, it is necessary for the venue to become involved in diplomatic arrangements with the Cameroonian rulers. Notions of circulation run through Youmbi’s work. By traveling sculptural works that have been ritually enacted in “the field” in Cameroon into art galleries and museums, and making allowance for them to return to the “field” afterward if their new owners desire, he challenges the permanence and function of art works in museums, and breaks the dichotomy between African “classical art” and “contemporary art.” Bamileke communities participating in Youmbi’s projects have awarded him with honorific titles for his support of local institutions. Hervé Youmbi also is one of the original five founding members of Cercle Kapsiki, a Cameroonian artist group established in 1998 that endeavors to enrich art education and programming in the country through artist-to-artist networks, exhibitions, residencies, and international commissions. The K Factory, the collective’s home, based in New Bell, one of the poorest but also one of the most dynamic districts of Douala, is a flexible space, experimental and open to a wide range of collaborations. Hervé Youmbi has been hosted on several artist residencies, which have facilitated his research of historical African art in European and American museum collections. Listed below are a selection of his numerous international exhibitions and public collections showing his work.
Visages de Masques / Faces of Masks; New African Masquerades: Artistic Innovations and Collaborations
