The Belgian Prime Minister takes a first step towards the restitution of African art, by giving his Congolese counterpart an inventory of collections from his colonial past.
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“A historic moment“This is how Congolese Prime Minister Jean-Michel Sama Lukonde described his exchange with his Belgian counterpart Alexander De Croo. The latter presented Thursday to the African representative, a complete inventory of works from the former Belgian Congo. The record details “some 84,000 ethnographic and organological objects“, (masks, instruments, everyday objects…)preserved in the Museum of Africa in Tervuren.
In total, the inventory represents 70% works from the Africa Museum, accumulated since its opening by King Leopold II in 1898, until the independence of the Congo in 1960. This document will allow Kinshasa to establish requests for the return of works from 2022. “The first step for this work of restitution was to give full transparency on what is today in our collections.“says Thomas DermineBelgian Secretary of State in charge of the file.
This gesture is part of a long process by the Belgian government to restore works looted from the Congo. In 2021, the European country announced its desire to transfer these assets from private to public: the only way to ensure their restitution. A bill on this subject should be presented to Parliament in the first half of the year.