Neo-Pan-Africanism, restitution and sovereignty
Restitution is not merely symbolic redress; it has institutional, governance and sovereignty implications that require careful policy design.
In 2025, the African Union (AU) declared 2026–2036 the Decade of Reparations, marking a renewed continental push for justice for Africans and people of African descent. Despite ongoing debates and differing visions of the AU, it remains a Pan-African institution that brings together the African nations and their diasporas, and promotes initiatives to advance justice in both symbolic and material terms, including the restitution of cultural artefacts and heritage pillaged during colonisation and enslavement.
This renewed focus on reparations reflects a broader shift in how sovereignty and justice are understood. Neo-Pan-Africanism moves beyond the earlier emphasis on political independence and unity, reframing reparations and restitution as instruments of restorative justice and sovereignty-building.
The return of cultural artefacts plays a role in the transformation process of forgiveness and crime recognition, and in promoting decolonised narratives and identities. Drawing on restorative justice principles and insights from a jurist at the Study Center Question Africaine (QA) in Niger, this analysis considers how restitution can contribute to these transformative processes while also raising important policy challenges.
The question, therefore, is not only whether artefacts return, but how their return reshapes governance, narrative authority and sovereignty.
In this context, reparations have increasingly been framed as a Neo-Pan-Africanist claim. About 90% of Africa’s cultural heritage is located outside the continent. Of the approximately one million known African artefacts held abroad, fewer than 1 000 have been returned.
Decades after independence and despite persistent resistance, several European countries, including France, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK, have established legal frameworks to facilitate the restitution of historical artefacts. Progress, however, remains partial.
African nations have widely welcomed restitution as a crucial step toward acknowledging the material and psychological destruction caused by European imperialism and colonialism. These historical harms continue to shape outcomes today, intersecting with instability, inequality and often reinforcing Africa’s political and economic exclusion in the global arena.
As highlighted by the jurist at QA, ‘restoration requires acknowledgement of the damage caused and the crimes committed. And Western states are still struggling to take these steps, which remains a problem.’ Cases such as the Benin Bronzes or the France-Senegal restitution process illustrate the limits of Western state-centric legal frameworks and approaches, which often reduce restitution to a bilateral transfer of property. Framed this way, the process risks becoming administrative rather than transformative, centred on diplomatic procedure rather than accountability. Furthermore, repair shows how restitution debates unfold differently across the continent. African contexts are not uniform in terms of political authority, social expectations or relationships with the former colonial powers. These debates reveal tensions between state authority and community-based legitimacy, generating disputes over representation and control. Without inclusive governance arrangements, restitution risks reinforcing domestic inequalities rather than resolving historical grievances.
Without inclusive governance arrangements, restitution risks reinforcing domestic inequalities rather than resolving historical grievances
According to Ubuntu philosophy, restorative justice focuses more on the suffering of victims than the offenders’ punishment; in this case, the African communities and the colonising powers. It urges active participation and inclusive community-based processes aimed at social, political and economic transformation towards forgiveness.
Institutionalised since the 1980s and 1990s, through mechanisms such as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in South Africa and the Gacaca courts in Rwanda, restorative justice is based on the notions of encounter, repair and transformation. The first assigns an active role to all those affected by the crime through direct participation, providing them with peer-to-peer negotiation power and the opportunity to repair the harm. Reparation in this sense emphasises reciprocity between the parties, which requires addressing the damage, allocating responsibilities, vindicating the innocent and restoring a sustainable balance.
In this regard, returned objects can support ‘African solutions to African problems, by enabling societies to confront historical crimes, acknowledge past injustices and reclaim agency over how their histories are interpreted and governed. We acknowledge, first, that these objects were stolen, and potentially recognise certain practices as crimes against humanity.’
This wording by QA is an explicit reference to the transformative potential of restorative justice: humanising the parties, fostering accountability and supporting recovery from trauma. Embedded in this notion of transformation is the rejection of a hierarchical order in favour of a form of self-understanding and awareness in relation to the Other, understood both as an individual and as a community.
Crucial to this process is the absence of imposed foreign value frameworks. QA speaks of ‘emancipation through self-narration, free from the external gaze and imposed narrative: the current narrative. Ideally, this is defined by narratives produced by Africans for Africans, stripped of the distorting filters of colonialism or Eurocentrism.’
There are ‘three distinct phases that prioritise narrative autonomy over the imposition of a single version of history regarding these cultural artefacts and the African past. Firstly, it requires the elaboration of the past by breaking the myth of the single story to reveal pre-colonial complexity. Secondly, it means rethinking the present. This freedom of narrative is an active critique of current power dynamics, whether at the level of media, languages or the economy. It is a way to move from survival to transformation. Survival in the sense that we assimilated the narrative that was given to us for granted. But now, with Neo-Pan-Africanism, with this movement calling for restitution, it means using these spiritualities, these cultures, these artefacts to transform the vision of Africa.
Thirdly, these decolonised concepts are essential for building the future, because the despoiled and looted cultural works can contribute to creating new and sustainable imaginaries, founded on a cultural and intellectual sovereignty of Africans. This narrative freedom is just a sine qua non condition for African solutions to African problems to be truly effective, and not simple copies of imported models.’
Memory, sovereignty and identity are central Neo-Pan-Africanist cornerstones shaping the current debate on restorative justice across movements, communities and institutions. How these principles are translated into institutional design will determine whether restitution strengthens state legitimacy and community trust, or reproduces existing hierarchies.
While theory on restorative justice appears relatively linear, from a policy-making perspective, the principles translate into practical challenges—whether for African states, continental institutions (e.g. AU) or European partners.
Restorative justice extends beyond inter-state relations to the internal political, economic and social stratifications within states and communities. Implementation should account for intersectional relations and multiple stakeholders at local, national and international levels, to avoid reinforcing existing power structures and inequalities.
Moreover, framing reparations in terms of restoring sovereignty over political and economic control of African resources and infrastructure management, including the infrastructure to host the cultural artefacts, remains a complex and contested endeavour. For QA, ‘the major issue of restitution is to reverse the power dynamics. It is no longer the Western museums that tell the story of Africa, but the African communities that reintegrate their heritage and tell it in the way best suited to their reality.’
Framing reparations in terms of restoring sovereignty over political and economic control of African resources and infrastructure management remains a complex and contested endeavour
Restitution is an act of both material and symbolic reparation. As the interviewee argued, it is aimed ‘to heal the spiritual and cultural wounds caused by these deprivations, in order to restore dignity. These objects, mostly religion-related, carry profound meaning, particularly in terms of education, creativity and economic growth. This is a value that cannot be overlooked in the current momentum toward the independence of the African continent.’ Integrating restitution into broader cultural and creative economy strategies could position heritage governance within national development planning, while simultaneously requiring careful consideration of potential risks. Particularly in plural and politically fragmented contexts, disputes over custodianship, the politicisation of religious symbolism and the commodification of sacred heritage may generate new tensions and exacerbate existing social and political fractures.
In practice, initiatives must account for the complexity of the different systems. Approaches need to be context-specific, avoid externally imposed narratives and foster equitable, peer-to-peer engagement and economic cooperation.
In practice, approaches must be context-specific, avoid externally imposed narratives and foster equitable engagement and economic cooperation
Legal and institutional frameworks have historically privileged governments over communities, constraining meaningful local participation in restitution processes. Even mediation mechanisms, while necessary, can reproduce these asymmetries when affected communities lack formal standing, decision-making authority or equal negotiating power. For African decision-makers, this underscores the need for policy and legal frameworks that integrate cultural restitution with new socioeconomic opportunities and strengthen local and diasporic institutions. At the continental level, the AU could promote harmonised guidelines, while Africa–Europe relations require negotiation tools based on parity and transparency, capable of preventing returns from becoming mere symbolic gestures. Such guidelines should include minimum consultation standards for affected communities, as well as mechanisms to monitor the long-term use and governance of returned artefacts. The manner in which restitution negotiations are conducted may also shape broader diplomatic and economic relations between African and European partners.
Transformative restorative justice, therefore, requires a rethinking of history and a reappropriation of decolonised cultural identities. If embedded in institutional reform and inclusive governance, restitution can contribute to shifts in power relations that strengthen sovereignty, enable cross-cultural dialogue and support more balanced socioeconomic partnerships.
Image: Gary Todd/Flickr
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