KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — The University of Cambridge has repatriated more than three dozen traditional artifacts to Uganda, in a major act of restitution welcomed by local authorities searching for them.
Some of the objects were shown exclusively to AP journalists on Wednesday. The British university returned the 39 items, ranging from tribal costumes to delicate pottery, to the East African country on Saturday.
The items remain the property of the collection of the Cambridge Museum of Archeology and Anthropology, which lends them to Uganda for an initial period of three years, said Mark Elliott, the museum’s senior curator of anthropology.
Elliott described it as “a collaboration between museums” that stems from years of conversations about the possibility of returning objects considered “exceptionally powerful and exceptionally sensitive to the communities whose belongings they were.”
The objects, selected by Ugandan curators, represent a small fraction of the approximately 1,500 Ugandan ethnographic objects that Cambridge has owned for a century. Cambridge acquired most as donations from private collections, and many were donated by an Anglican missionary active in Uganda in the 1890s and early 20th century.
Uganda was declared a British protectorate in 1894. Independence came in 1962.
“This is about returning these objects to the hands of the people of Uganda,” said Elliott. “These objects have been away from home for a long time.”
The next step is to “research its contemporary significance and help make decisions about its future,” he said.
The Uganda Museum, in the capital, Kampala, is expected to hold a temporary exhibition of the objects next year.
Uganda’s agreement with Cambridge is renewable, allowing for the possibility of a permanent loan and perhaps local ownership, said Jackline Nyiracyiza, the Ugandan government’s commissioner in charge of museums and monuments.
“Sixty years passed before we got 39 objects,” she said. “We are working now with the Cambridge team to… be able to talk to other museums and be able to repatriate others perhaps next year or in the near future.”
Ugandan officials, seeking such restitution, first traveled to Cambridge in 2022, as more African governments began demanding accountability for items of aesthetic or cultural value that were looted before and during the colonial era.
In other parts of Africa, including the West African nation of Nigeria, there have been restitution events in recent years.
Nelson Abiti, chief curator of the Uganda Museum, spoke of the Cambridge agreement as a breakthrough that could be exemplary for other museums with ethnographic items from Uganda.
“This is the largest single movement of objects returned to the African continent” in recent years, said Abiti.
Still, restitution remains a struggle for African governments and the African Union has put the return of looted cultural property on its agenda. The continental body intends to have a common policy on the subject.
