(FEBRUARY 4, 2025) Open Restitution Africa (ORA)—the leading pan-African initiative dedicated to aggregating and disseminating information on the restitution of African belongings and human ancestors—today announced the launch of case studies, analyses, and a resource library pertaining to the restitution of African belongings and human ancestors, which brings together, for the first time, a growing data set on centuries of restitution efforts led by African communities, scholars, museum professionals, artists, and policymakers. By making accessible these research-driven tools and insights drawn from this newly established data repository which will continue to expand, ORA is not only empowering African stakeholders and restitution practitioners but additionally driving a shift in established restitution narratives that privilege Western institutions and individuals by re-centering African histories, perspectives, and needs, in addition to setting a new global standard of practice rooted in collaboration, community leadership, and equity.
An estimated 90 to 95% of Africa’s cultural heritage is held outside the continent, with restitution efforts historically controlled by institutions in the Global North, where opaque archives and collection records hinder access. Founded in 2020 to address this fragmentation, ORA discovered that most restitution information was not publicly available online and was only shared informally among an often marginalised network of practitioners. To address this, ORA’s all-women team of researchers—led by South African fine artist and cultural strategist Molemo Moiloa and celebrated Kenyan historian Chao Tayiana Maina—engaged cultural practitioners, museum professionals, scholars, and artists across Africa to collect primary data on centuries of restitution efforts.
Over the past three years, ORA’s core leadership team has collaborated with research fellows to document restitution processes across the continent. As each fellow is rooted in the community and context of the belonging or human ancestors that they are tracking, this grass-roots methodology has enabled ORA to obtain and share crucial primary data, oral histories, and previously inaccessible records. The information gathered effectively maps restitution journeys that have been consolidated into 16 key case studies that span the entire African continent—located in Botswana, Cameroon, Kenya, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe—and the past 200 years. Further insights have been compiled into in-depth analyses examining the effectiveness of restitution strategies within various cultural and political contexts. By documenting diverse restitution pathways and demystifying these processes, ORA equips practitioners with the knowledge to facilitate returns while ensuring African expertise is advanced in academic, institutional, and public forums.
In late 2025, ORA will unveil the second phase of their launch: an Open Data Platform that will serve as a publicly navigable repository of information about African restitution, complemented by additional insights and data visualisations. Recognising that successful restitution processes depend on information-sharing and strong relationships between stakeholders, the Open Data Platform will continually expand and evolve to incorporate contributions from diverse research fellows and practitioners to remain adaptive and reflect Africa’s dynamic knowledge systems.
Together, the various components of ORA’s initiative consequently represent the first comprehensive resource on the restitution of African belongings and human ancestors, transforming previously inaccessible data into actionable tools for African stakeholders and fostering a shift that challenges the historical primacy of the Global North in restitution practices.