Museums
African Voices Archive
Adelaide Sallema
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Ndapewoshali Ilunga
Juma Ondeng
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Adelaide Sallema is a Tanzanian researcher and curator. She holds an MSc in Environmental Science with a focus on ecology and ecosystem restoration. She is the Director of Museums, Monuments and Sites at the National Museum of Tanzania, where she has focused on preserving and showcasing Tanzanian history and art.
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Babatunde E. Adebiyi, PhD, is Legal Adviser and Director of Legal Services at the National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM) of Nigeria. He has represented Nigeria at UNESCO’s General Assembly and meetings of States Parties to its Cultural Heritage Conventions, and acts as Nigeria’s legal counsel in international forums concerning heritage return claims and negotiations. He is a resource person for ECOWAS and the African Union, and a member of the Benin Dialogue Group, the Benin Initiative Switzerland/The Restitution Forum, the Global Action for Restitution of African Artefacts, ICOMOS, and the ICOMOS Climate Change and Heritage Working Group in Nigeria. His publications include ‘Legal and Other Issues in Repatriating Nigeria’s Looted Artefacts’, ‘Towards the Perfect Law’, ‘Return or Recirculation?’, and ‘The Fault Is Not in Our Stars’.
Affiliation(s): National Commission for Museums and Monuments
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Published Work: Legal and other Issues in Repatriating Nigeria's Looted Artefacts
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Dr Njabulo Chipangura is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology with an interest in the empirical ways in which museum practices can be decolonised through epistemic and aesthetic disobedience, benchmarked by undoing earlier ways of knowledge production, particularly by examining African collections and their representations. Njabulo has published several research papers that examine ongoing debates about the coloniality of museums and associated knowledge production and representation practices, with the aim of imagining a decolonised museum in Africa. He is also a managing editor for the Museum and Society, published by the University of Leicester Open Journals. Njabu is currently working on a co-edited volume entitled The Museologies of Africa: Rethinking African Museums, Community Inclusion, Living Cultures and Decolonisation which will be published by Routledge in 2026.
Affiliation(s): National University of Ireland
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Published Work: Provenance Research in Museums: Principles, Practices and Possibilities, Volume 1; Truth-telling as a form of decolonial care: stories from a collaborative object biography research with the Ndau community of Eastern Zimbabwe; Community Collaborations and Social Biographies of Museum Collections from Colonial Contexts: Meanings of Zulu Beadwork; Where are Nehanda's remains?: A Zimbabwean Search in the Context of Shifting Museum Politics (In Fifteen Colonial Thefts: A Guide to Looted African Heritage in Museums); “Bring the Objects out of the Basement!”: The Wellcome African Collection at Manchester Museum
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Ndapewoshali Ndahafa Ilunga is a historian, trained accountant, project manager and specialist in Namibian labour law. She has worked in the field of cultural heritage, art and culture since 2014. She is vehemently committed to the preservation, documentation and decolonisation of Namibia's historical landscape and cultural heritage. Between 2014 and 2024, Ndapewoshali worked at the Museums Association of Namibia (MAN) in various capacities, ultimately becoming its Director. She has more recently joined the FinNamKnow Project - a collaborative project between Finnish and Namibian scholar. The project seeks to explore ways to decolonise the history of the Finnish-Namibian relations, and to produce historical knowledge that is increasingly inclusive and multivocal, in a manner that overturns the epistemological legacies of European colonial projects. Here she is also exploring and growing in her identity as a Decolonial Christian Historian.
Affiliation(s): Henry Nxumalo Foundation Museums Association of Namibia FinNamKnow Project (Decolonizing History-Writing: Transcultural Production, Mobilization and Transformations of Knowledge in Finnish-Namibian Relations 1870–1990)
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Published Work: Confronting Colonial Pasts, Envisioning Creative Futures Documentary
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Lennon Mhishi is an anthropologist whose interdisciplinary work spans interests in Africa and its diasporas; museums; material culture and art practices; the afterlives of slavery and colonialism; and approaches to contemporary forms of exploitation, forced labour and human rights in different African countries. He has experience in migration and diaspora, heritage, music, and other arts-based, creative approaches to knowledge-making and engagement. Before joining UBC, Lennon worked at the University of Oxford, based at the Pitt Rivers Museum. He was part of the project, “Reconnecting Objects”, funded by the VW Stiftung. He collaborated with partners in Oxford (UK), Cape Town (South Africa), Dakar (Senegal), Dschang (Cameroon) and Berlin (Germany). The project, among other things, explored colonial collections—as well as art practices—and the possibilities of mobilising African and diasporic communities in rethinking these collections.
Affiliation(s): University of British Columbia
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Published Work: Where are Nehanda's remains?: A Zimbabwean Search in the Context of Shifting Museum Politics (In Fifteen Colonial Thefts: A Guide to Looted African Heritage in Museums); Chimurenga epistemologies: diasporic entanglements, colonial afterlives and the struggle of thinking other worlds
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Juma Ondeng works for the National Museums of Kenya as the Keeper of Antiquities, Sites and Monuments for the Western Region. He has served in various positions since joining the National Museums of Kenya, including coordinator of Public Programmes and Coordinator of research and training projects, such as the Getty East Africa Programme (in partnership with the British Museum). He is a founder member of the International Inventories Programme (IIP) that investigated Kenya’s collections that are currently held in museums and cultural institutions in the global north. He has a passion for the use of traditional knowledge and related systems in economic development.
Affiliation(s): National Museums of Kenya
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Published Work: Invisible Inventories: Questioning Kenyan Collections in Western Museums. International Inventories Programme
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Abdul-Mohammed Gimba is the Director of Museums for the National Commission for Museums and Monuments in Nigeria. He is involved in advocacy for the promotion of Nigerian cultural heritage, highlighting the importance of museums in national development, and collaborating with the media to enhance public awareness of monuments. As a curator, Gimba emphasized the need to preserve historical objects scientifically and promotes the synergy between physical and virtual museums. He has been deeply involved in Nigeria's restitution efforts, particularly in terms of establishing and refining soft infrastructure for belongings that have been repatriated to the country, and are being housed in the national museums.
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Emmanuel Yacobo is a social scientist with strong academic background in education, public policy analysis, cultural heritage management and research on ethnic conflict analysis and peace building. He currently serves as the Director and Principal Curator of National Museum of Tanzania. He has been the main contact person for the repatriation of belongings and human ancestors to Tanzania.
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Emmanuel Ndiema is a prominent archaeologist and senior researcher at the National Museums of Kenya (NMK), currently serving as the Head of Earth Sciences. He is actively involved in the documentation and management of Kenya's cultural and natural heritage, with a strong focus on community engagement and the repatriation of cultural artifacts. He is currently part of the working group that is developing a framework for restitution in Kenya.
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