Senegal and Ivory Coast have formally requested the repatriation of thousands of artifacts from French museum collections, following a groundbreaking French government report published on November 23 that recommends returning colonial-era objects taken before 1960. Senegalese culture minister Abdou Latif Coulibaly announced plans to file a formal request for up to 10,000 Senegalese objects, while Ivorian authorities have submitted a list of about 100 masterpieces, with director Silvie Memel Kassi noting up to 4,000 Ivorian objects remain in Paris's Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac Museum and New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
This development tests France's commitment to restitution after the report by Bénédicte Savoy and Felwine Sarr, which has sparked opposition from French museum leaders like Quai Branly director Stéphane Martin, who argues the recommendations sideline museums' conservation roles. French president Emmanuel Macron has returned 26 Beninese artworks and plans a European-African conference, but has stopped short of fully embracing the report's most radical proposals, making the response to these requests a key indicator of how transformative the restitution movement will be.