Open Restitution Africa (ORA), an African-led research organization, has compiled case studies including the Ngadji drum, a sacred instrument confiscated from Kenya's Pokomo people by British colonial officers in 1902 and now held by the British Museum. With a $600,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation, ORA provided microgrants to scholars like William Mutta Tsaka of the National Museums of Kenya, who documented the drum's cultural significance and the community's ongoing struggle for repatriation. The project aims to fund independent researchers and community activists across Africa, covering fieldwork costs often neglected by larger provenance grants.
This initiative matters because it shifts the restitution narrative from a Western-centric focus on high-profile cases like the Benin Bronzes to community-centered stories of loss and repair. ORA's 2022 report found that Africans authored at most 4% of academic restitution publications between 2016 and 2021, and their voices were often limited to ownership arguments rather than cultural impact. By funding local researchers and creating an open data platform, ORA challenges media and scholarship gaps, emphasizing that true restitution involves complex work of cultural restoration, not just physical return of objects.