My name is Molemo Moiloa, and I am from South Africa. I'm an artist and researcher. I work on a project called Open Restitution Africa, which is a collaboration between people from across the African continent, but mostly based in Johannesburg, South Africa, and Nairobi, Kenya. We work with people from many countries in Africa and the African diaspora – both historical diaspora and recent diaspora – on how to think about restitution from our own perspective, and what we need from our own perspective. This is my first time actually engaging with the Lusophone context. So, I'm actually very excited to hear from you and I want to learn from you. I will speak just very shortly and then we can share.

These are probably statistics you are familiar with, which are very important. But they are just a representation in numbers of something much bigger that was lost and taken away. I think the most important thing about them is that they should remind us of why we are trying to do the work we're trying to do. And what restitution should really mean.

You might have noticed around the world many things are starting to get returned. Maybe not so much here, it seems. But there's an increase in restitutions happening across the world. And it really feels like a good thing is happening. Something is kind of changing.

At Open Restitution Africa we do some research around restitution. And the information I'm going to share with you is from a recent research report.

What you see here is an academic publishing on the theme of restitution.

In relation to the African continent, you can see that there's a big jump just after 2016. It's been growing a little bit from 2009 already. But 2016 is the moment when the French president makes a speech in Ouagadougou and says that things should be returned. And from there, you can just see the change, as this graphic shows. Thus the question is, really, what does this change mean? And is it automatically a good thing? Or should we also be careful and think about it in a careful way?

I think it comes back to this question of why we want to do restitution and what it's supposed to do.

It's important to know that Africans have been demanding returns for at least 200 years. So even though it's been small, and now it's gone big, it's been happening over a very long period of time. For example, in the 1960s Africans were demanding heritage back at the time of independence of many countries in the continent. And this was because they were going to become independent, so they needed their cultural heritage returned. There was an understanding that it was not just about an object. It was really about how do we become a new nation? How do we repair who we are? It was about being proud of who we are.

So, we've seen the growth in academia. But it's quite similar in social media and a popular discussion. The growth, for example, that there is on the Benin Bronzes, has expanded massively over the same period of time.

If we go look at that section, that was very big. After the speech of Ouagadougou, this is kind of what it looks like now, this movement upwards.

But if I was to ask you, how many of these people do you think are African? What would you guess?

This is what you see. Actually, the case is that the growth is not of Africans, despite the 200-year history. The growth is non-Africans publishing and quoting each other. They are not quoting Africans when they publish. So I think this statistic really tells you that if Africans have been fighting for 200 years, but they're not the ones being heard, then the question is, who is being heard? And what are they saying? This is the important question.

The main problem with this inequality is that the key issue in Europe and America is museums. Museums have these objects, and they need to leave. This becomes the dominant conversation. But what happens when they leave? How do they leave? And when they arrive somewhere else, what happens after that? There's no discussion about this. It also means that we spend our time fighting about maybe some racist things someone said or arguing about the details of history. But what we don't discuss is what is the best way for us to be engaging in the process of restitution? What are the best decisions we can make together? And what is it that Africans truly want in the restitution process?

A part of the discussion that is not happening is that Africans almost never get to speak to Africans. Usually, they speak only with their coloniser. For example, now in Africa there are many conferences on museums, like the French organised a conference on museums in French, and the Germans organised a conference on museums in relation to former German colonies. But Africans don't get to share tactics and strategies. One of the other things that is not happening enough is a discussion with the diaspora. There is not enough dialogue happening. Often it will be the African diaspora say in Europe, having a battle with the former coloniser, but not enough conversation is happening between Africa and the African Diaspora. And that includes the historic diaspora as in the Caribbean, in North America, and Brazil, for example. An example of this [lack of communication] happened recently in the United States of America. There was a court case to stop the restitution of Benin Bronzes. And the court case was brought by African Americans. And the reason they said that the bronzes should not be returned is because the Kingdom of Benin had been involved in the slave trades in Benin. I'm not from Benin, so it's not really my business, but I think it's an important question. And if restitution is about repair and humanity, then we should be able to have difficult conversations and engage with each other across the Atlantic about history at every level. So I think it's an important opportunity to really have a conversation with the diaspora.

In the last two slides I want to show you, from the research, the top most prolific authors.

These are the authors who've written the most about restitution over time. And the important one to look at is Prince Folarin Shyllon from Nigeria. He's a real prince, or he was a real prince. And he's now passed away. But he's been working since – I believe – the 70s, on restitution and publishing a lot. And even though he wrote most of the articles and books, when we look at who's being quoted and referenced the most in academic literature, he's not even in the top 10. He's number 19. And instead, we have an European [Dan Hicks], who by now only had one book on restitution.

He [Hicks] is also the most retweeted. He's more retweeted than BBC or CNN on restitution. For all of us on restitution, he gets more retweets than any of those. And I think this role of the internet is actually really important. Because Prince Follarin was very old, so he wasn't on the internet. But there are quite elderly men, for example [Kwame] Opoku. He is the first African that is most referenced, and he mostly publishes on a blog online. He just writes a lot of articles online, and gets a lot of information out. That's why he's over there. I think what's important is to know that these two people are by far the ones listened to the most, and the third one is the French president. You will notice I don't really say the names because they are the ones dominating the conversation. Then the theme becomes their problem, right? Which is the French president and someone who works in a British museum. Their concerns, their issues, even if they are our allies, will still be put ahead of African issues.

For example, Kwane Opoku writes on many things, but he has an article about the problem of colonial languages dividing Africans regarding restitution issues. And so, this question of language, and I think in the Lusophone context in particular, but even Francophone, Anglophone, is that we don't talk to each other enough. A key problem is the way the continent remains divided, of course due to the colonial language barriers of French, English and Portuguese. These barriers are tragic and more translation work needs to be done, and I would love to talk more about how we can do that. We [Molemo Moiloa from South Africa and Chao Maina from Kenya, co-founders of ORA] are both from former British colonies, but have been trying to develop more Francophone connections. We have a tutoring series launching on YouTube that was developed by an all-female African film team. And we're making sure it's dubbed in French [by a Senegalese team of women]. But there is much more to do.

Another issue related to language is even just how we refer to certain things. For example, we usually use the words "artefact" or "human remains". And these are words that come from the museums. These are not the African words that we use for these kinds of issues. For example, you'll notice that at Open Restitution Africa we don't say "human remains". We say "human ancestors", because we want to re-humanise the process. And we need to develop these types of languages together. Then again, this isn't the concern of the global north necessarily. This is a question that we need to create from an African perspective.

The good news is that many incredible Africans are doing really important work. And so this is an easy problem to solve. It's really about following the right people on Twitter and retweeting the right tweets, and ensuring that we're circulating the voices of people form the African continent and the African diaspora as much as possible. For you to know, the man with the yellow and pink hat is Kwame Opoku. And that's something we can all do in this work.

I like to call it an African library of ideas. There are really interesting ideas, and many of them are quite new. We also have the possibility to contribute to these new ideas. The vital thing is that these people are also thinking a lot about what does it mean to repair who we are as people and the complex work it takes, which is not about moving an object from one place to another. It's a much more complex work of law, education, spirituality and healing. There is a much bigger world of work that needs to be done and these people are doing amazing.

That's it. Thank you very much and I really look forward to hearing from you.

Molemo Moiloa director at Andani.Africa and co-lead of the project Open Restitution Africa