Colonial Legacies

Certainly, Africa is in a weaker economic and political position today partly because of colonialism than if colonialism had never happened.Footnote ²⁰ The colonial rule undoubtedly affected the continent’s historical, economic, and cultural trajectories. Africa was the last continent to be colonized by Europeans, yet it was also the most intensely colonized.Footnote ²¹ Following the capture of what would eventually become the British Cape Colony in 1795, European nations began to partition not only the coastal regions of Africa but nearly the whole continent among themselves. The 1885 Berlin Conference determined the division and colonization of Africa under European rule.Footnote ²² Although the Berlin Act formally governed trade and navigation in African waterways, it substantially relied on and codified the doctrine of discovery.Footnote ²³ To justify their conquests, European explorers operated on the legal fiction that the civilizations that they were “discovering” were “tabula rasa” (clean slates) and did not own the land they occupied (terra nullius).Footnote ²⁴ The colonizers thus pretended that they were entitled to “civilize” them.Footnote ²⁵ The Berlin Conference reflected the scramble for Africa and its exploitation through the colonial system.Footnote ²⁶ No African political entities “were invited to provide their view of the legality of colonization or, put differently, the loss of sovereignty over their societies.”Footnote ²⁷ At the Berlin Conference, Africa was regarded as terra nullius: European powers “never took into account that there were peoples of vastly different backgrounds and cultures living on the continent.”Footnote ²⁸ Rather, they regarded Africa “as a source of raw materials for their industries in Europe” and as a “marketplace for their finished products.”Footnote ²⁹

From 1880 to 1960, colonial powers maintained political control over and economically exploited their colonies in Africa. They imposed their own laws, languages, religions, and cultural practices on colonized peoples while extracting resources and wealth for their own benefit. This involved brutal forms of exploitation. For instance, in the Belgian Congo under King Leopold II’s rule from 1885 to 1908, the extraction of rubber from forests led to widespread violence against local populations.Footnote ³⁰ Colonial policy was “based on the violent exploitation of natural and human resources,” with a consequent “destruction of economic and social life … [and] … dismemberment of political structures.”Footnote ³¹ Historians estimate that millions died during this period due to starvation or disease resulting from forced labor.Footnote ³² Colonialism had a devastating impact on African societies and is still felt in many former colonies today.Footnote ³³ Colonialism inevitably affected African development, and its negative impacts included political subjection, discrimination, economic exploitation, and cultural erasure.

Europeans regarded African cultures, customs, and beliefs as irrational, despising the very features that made them resilient and compelling. African cultures tend to prioritize the collective over the individual, emphasize the spiritual linkage between communities and nature, and believe in the unity of past, present, and future generations.Footnote ³⁴ For instance, for the Kikuyu in Kenya, “communion with the ancestral spirits is perpetuated through contact with the soil in which the ancestors of the tribe lie buried … it is the soil that feeds the child through a lifetime: and again after death, it is the soil that nurtures the spirits of the dead for eternity.”Footnote ³⁵ African art “does not exist in a vacuum” but often reflects spiritual needs and serves “specific ritual purposes.”Footnote ³⁶ It thus holds “spiritual, cultural [and] emotional” value in addition to and beyond a merely aesthetic value for the relevant communities.Footnote ³⁷ In Africa, “much of material culture … also holds symbolic meanings.”Footnote ³⁸ It “gives people a sense of identity” and “a degree of psychological security” by “help[ing] to define one’s place in the world”Footnote ³⁹ and “empowering people to own their history and heritage.”Footnote ⁴⁰ Taking it away “amounts to taking away the soul, the spirit” of the people.Footnote ⁴¹

Instead, Europeans considered African art raw, their tales naïve, their music cacophonous, and their dances wild.Footnote ⁴² Colonialism established hierarchies of knowledge and relied on the alleged cultural superiority of Western logic. While ideologies of otherness were inculcated in the Western psyche, the displacement of local knowledge, languages, and ways of being in favor of colonizer epistemology, languages, and customs also affected the African soul.Footnote ⁴³ In the “scramble for Africa,” the colonizers believed that “native cultures would vanish through … modernization or development.”Footnote ⁴⁴ In turn, the colonized unwillingly “internalized the colonial model of human existence and history.”Footnote ⁴⁵

Despite the formal denigration of African history, heritage, and values, colonial powers did not hesitate to substantially appropriate African lands and their cultural resources.Footnote ⁴⁶ African culture and heritage were simultaneously dismissed as primitive and appropriated. During the early 1900s, the aesthetics of traditional African sculptures, statues, and masks deeply influenced European artists like Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), who mixed the stylized treatment of the human figure in African sculptures with a post-Impressionist painting style. While these artists knew nothing of the original meaning and function of the West and Central African sculptures they encountered, they instantly recognized the spiritual aspect of the composition and adapted these qualities to their own efforts to move beyond the naturalism that had defined Western art.Footnote ⁴⁷

For example, the Bangwa Queen, “a wooden ancestor sculpture of spiritual importance to the Bangwa, a people [I]ndigenous to … Cameroon” featured in a series of pictures by the US photographer Man Ray (1890–1976).Footnote ⁴⁸ It was such iconic art that shaped modernism in the early twentieth century. In the words of Picasso,

[m]en had made those masks and other objects for a sacred purpose, a magic purpose, as a kind of mediation between themselves and the unknown hostile forces that surround them, in order to overcome their fear and horror by giving it a form and image. At that moment, I realized what painting was all about. Painting isn’t an aesthetic operation, it’s a form of magic designed to be a mediator between this strange, hostile world and us, a way of seizing power by giving form to our terrors as well as our desires. When I came to that realization, I knew I had found my way.Footnote ⁴⁹

Even when colonial laws and institutions aimed to protect African cultural heritage, they drew on European models prioritizing Western values and the tangible and visible over the intangible and aural. Western notions of cultural value dictated what was worth being protected, how, by whom, and for whom. Not only did African intangible heritage, aural tradition, and cultural diversity notably go missing from these legal instruments, but they were also proactively ostracized, if not totally opposed or erased, if they conflicted with Western values. For instance, not only were traditional medicine and the herbalists/healers “the target of colonial vilification,” but statutes also criminalized traditional medicine as witchcraft or sorcery.Footnote ⁵⁰

Instead, colonial management prioritized the protection of material, natural, and monumental heritage according to Western canons of cultural heritage protection. With regard to immovable heritage such as natural and cultural sites, colonial heritage management practices disrupted prior pragmatic traditional and collective management systems.Footnote ⁵¹ Nature conservation and the development of national parks were based on the colonial myth of an “African Eden,” a construct emphasizing exotic wildlife and magnificent landscapes, simultaneously marginalizing local peoples and their ways of life.Footnote ⁵² Instead of regarding local farmers and their livestock as essential for nature conservation, colonial statutes portrayed them as destroyers of nature to be removed from the protected areas.Footnote ⁵³ Colonial laws did not allow local communities to keep using protected sites for ritual or customary purposes: they even outlawed their access to such sites.Footnote ⁵⁴

Movable cultural objects were mostly displayed in ethnographic or natural history museums, where they were randomly assembled. Museums were parts of the colonial infrastructure, instruments of political power and education: their collections constituted “the physical remains of practices, institutions, movements, and ideologies that were conquered and dismembered, as governments established their rule over Africa’s peoples.”Footnote ⁵⁵ In their halls, cultural objects were deprived of their authentic cultural meaning, decontextualized from their social, political, and spiritual roots, and transformed into curiosities and “subjects of scholarly study and aesthetic admiration.”Footnote ⁵⁶ Cultural items “were no longer treated as sacred or historical objects, but … were appreciated for their rarity, their craftsmanship, and their physical beauty.”Footnote ⁵⁷ The collections endorsed a “colonial narrative” that Europeans had about Africans.Footnote ⁵⁸ For instance, for museum curators, “drums were material objects, instruments with which to make music. The political voice of the drum – its coordinating resonance, its power to summon people and punctuate their movements – was rendered inaudible.”Footnote ⁵⁹ In other words, colonial collection silenced and sometimes even obscured the spiritual dimension of African heritage, that is, “the value that … cultural heritage has for its creators and bearers as an essential element of their own cultural identity.”Footnote ⁶⁰

Ongoing decolonization efforts have provided a path forward for affected communities. The 1945 United Nations Charter affirmed the right of all peoples to self-determination.Footnote ⁶¹ The 1960 Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples held that colonialism should cease swiftly and upheld the right of every people to self-determination, that is “to freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.”Footnote ⁶² The right to self-determination also features prominently in the 1966 CovenantsFootnote ⁶³ and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.Footnote ⁶⁴ Several cases brought before the International Court of Justice confirm the justiciability of this right.Footnote ⁶⁵ The right to self-determination is a composite entitlement: on the one hand, people have the right to freely form their own state and choose their government without interference. On the other hand, they also have the right to freely choose their economic, social, and cultural systems.Footnote ⁶⁶

While former colonies gradually achieved their political independence, economic and cultural decolonization remains a work in progress.Footnote ⁶⁷ During and after decolonization, many newly independent states struggled to establish independent economies and continued to be subject to other, less overt forms of outside control, like colonial debt or currency dependency, external corporate control, or resource exploitation. In some cases, not only did decolonization fail to bring about the anticipated transition from colonial to post-colonial nations, but it did entail a shift from colonialism to neo-colonialism, extending prior forms of subjugation. For critical scholars, “the imperialtists of today endeavor to achieve their ends not merely by military means, but by economic penetration^, [and] cultural assimilation.”Footnote ⁶⁸ Under neocolonialism, newly independent countries have remained under he control of external economic or monetary forces.Footnote ⁶⁹

The Promise of Cultural Decolonization

Cultural decolonization requires “decolonizing the mind” and defusing the “cultural bomb” of colonialism in Africa. If “[t]he effect of the cultural bomb is to annihilate a people’s belief in their names, in their languages, in their environments, in their heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and ultimately in themselves,” defusing such bomb requires restoring people’s self-confidence, trust in their language, and pride in their heritage.Footnote ⁷⁰ If the colonizers have planted “an inferiority complex” in every colonized people by replacing local cultures with that “of the civilizing nation, that is, with the culture of the mother country,” it is the task of artists, novelists, educators, musicians, and policymakers to “decolonize the mind,” to help African people reconnect with African culture.Footnote ⁷¹ If the colonizers “sought to enslave the African mind and destroy the African soul,” what is needed is an “emancipation of the mind” and renewal of the soul.Footnote ⁷² If the West established a “cognitive empire,” what is needed is dismantling “a colonial state of mind.”Footnote ⁷³

In this context, scholars have consistently called for decolonizing research methods and methodologies,Footnote ⁷⁴ international law,Footnote ⁷⁵ and international cultural heritage law.Footnote ⁷⁶ Decolonizing research entails focusing on concerns and worldviews of non-Western individuals, understanding theory and research from previously “other(ed)” perspectives, and increasing participation of researchers from under-represented countries and under-represented societal segments. Decolonizing international law requires adopting a critical approach to the existing legal framework. Cultural decolonization is about recovering non-Western art, cultural practices, philosophical traditions, and/or knowledge. It also entails empowering postcolonial citizens (in both former colonies and former metropoles) to exercise their creative agency, contribute to both “Western” and “non-Western” cultures, choose their language of cultural expression, and eventually explore beyond the limits of national knowledge production.Footnote ⁷⁷ Decolonizing cultural governance requires understanding what heritage is, how it can be managed, by whom, and for whose benefit in a rapidly changing world.Footnote ⁷⁸ This section highlights some key challenges.

In postcolonial Africa, policy makers have been intensely aware that protecting cultural heritage enables people to affirm their cultural identity, defend their sovereignty and independence, and foster development.Footnote ⁷⁹ They have regarded culture as “significant in the present, both as a message from the past and as a pathway to the future.”Footnote ⁸⁰ Accordingly, many newly independent African countries have gradually rebuilt “the architecture of cultural life.”Footnote ⁸¹ National museums have often inherited buildings and collections from colonial administrations.Footnote ⁸² At the same time, however, they have rearranged collections and connected them with particular communities to recover “ancestral wisdom,” provide “a source of instruction and inspiration for the present day,”Footnote ⁸³ and create “a forum for dialogue and critical thinking.”Footnote ⁸⁴ There has been “a shift from objects to people, from the visible to the invisible and from collections to communities”:Footnote ⁸⁵ museums have become custodians of cultural heritage, “platforms for dialogue, space of memory and common identity, and areas of resistance against oppression.”Footnote ⁸⁶

Significant diplomatic efforts have accompanied such initiatives, bolstering and renewing international cooperation in the cultural sector. These diplomatic initiatives reflect the ebbs and flows of contemporary geopolitics in which the reclamation of African heritage is negotiated through access to natural resources.Footnote ⁸⁷ They also illuminate the soft power of cultural politics in international relations.Footnote ⁸⁸ For instance, Senegal has pursued distinct cultural objectives in its foreign policy, leading to the opening of the Museum of Black Civilizations in Dakar in 2018. Funded by the People’s Republic of China, the museum aims to display black civilizations’ artifacts, championing the idea of a shared African identity. It also epitomizes the country’s readiness to receive looted African objects and to care for them.Footnote ⁸⁹ In parallel, the construction of the National Museum of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Kinshasa, inaugurated in 2019, was funded by the Korean Agency for Cooperation, using locally available building materials and solar energy.Footnote ⁹⁰ The integration of new museums into the daily lives of people greatly improves societal fabric and can contribute to sustainable development and the African Renaissance.Footnote ⁹¹

In parallel, African countries have long sought to end the illicit trafficking of cultural items and requested the return of African heritage from foreign museums and collections. Their call for the international regulation of the illicit traffic of cultural objects led to the adoption of the 1970 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export, and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural PropertyFootnote ⁹² and the 1995 UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects.Footnote ⁹³ They also promoted the adoption of the first United Nations General Assembly resolution on the restitution of artworks.Footnote ⁹⁴ In 1978, the then Director of UNESCO, the Senegalese Amadou-Mahtar M’Bow (1921–2024), called for the restitution of looted items, arguing that the restitution of an artwork to the country of origin “enables a people to recover part of its memory and identity.” In this way, “the dialogue between civilizations which shapes the history of the world” continues “in an atmosphere of mutual respect among nations.”Footnote ⁹⁵ More recently, the Charter for the African Cultural Renaissance requires African states to “take steps to put an end to the pillage and illicit traffic of African cultural property and ensure that such cultural property is returned to their countries of origin.”Footnote ⁹⁶ It also requires African States to “take the necessary measures to ensure that archives and other historical records which have been illicitly removed from Africa are returned to African governments.”Footnote ⁹⁷ Agenda 2063—The Africa We Want explicitly requires that “Africa’s stolen culture, heritage, and artifacts” be “fully repatriated and safeguarded.”Footnote ⁹⁸

Requests for restitution have intensified in the past decade. On the one hand, African countries have regarded the plunder of their heritage as epitomizing colonial violence and cultural alienation. They thus regard such cultural items as “symbols of resistance” linking their return to history, identity, justice, ethics, and human rights.Footnote ⁹⁹ In parallel, Western museums have been facing increasing scrutiny over the origins of their collections and whether they include cultural objects looted during the colonial period.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Post-colonial studies argue that Western museums displaying African artifacts often emerge from systems of colonial governance and have implemented colonial conceptual structures, privileging certain memories and repressing others.Footnote ¹⁰¹ They thus see the retention of cultural artifacts as a form of enduring cultural imperialism. To this community of experts, the promise of restitution represents “the possibility of an alternative future” freed from imperial narratives of history often narrated in “world culture” museums and “an opportunity to embrace Indigenous counternarratives.”Footnote ¹⁰²

Conversely, those on the retention side of the debate who want the artifacts to remain in museums have invoked legal concepts such as the intertemporal rule or tempus regit actum and domestic laws prohibiting the deaccessioning of museums’ collections. They have also relied on notions of preservation and cultural universalism to keep the antiquities in their collections.Footnote ¹⁰³ Western museums have often argued that they preserve the objects, educate and entertain the public, and provide research opportunities to the scientific community.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ They treat cultural artifacts as belonging to humanity rather than given communities.

Despite these ongoing debates, some Western governments and museums have increasingly shown a willingness to discuss the return of cultural items with their counterparts in former colonies.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ For instance, in a 2017 public speech at the University of Ouaga in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, French President Emmanuel Macron depicted French colonialism as a “crime against humanity” and expressed his commitment to increase French economic aid, enhance French foreign investments, and start a policy of gradual return of cultural objects removed during the colonial period to African countries.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ Whether this entails “bargaining cultural capital” in exchange for economic opportunities remains to be seen.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ Certainly, upon his return to France, Macron asked Felwar Sarr, a Senegalese economist and philosopher, and Bénédicte Savoy, a French historian, to write a report on whether, and if so how, to realize the gradual return of cultural objects removed during the colonial period to African countries. The influential 2018 Savoy/Sarr Report on the restitution of African heritage recommended large-scale returns of sub-Saharan African artifacts from French museum collections.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ It expressed a paradigm change from legal to ethical considerations and called for “a new relational ethics.”Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Such ethics uses heritage as a means for reconstructing and reformulating the history and memory of the African continent “through reconnecting these objects with the current societies and the questions and problems that these contemporary societies pose.”Footnote ¹¹⁰ Although the implementation of the ambitious plan remains slow and fragmented due to France’s still-conservationist cultural heritage law, the Report has brought the restitution of African heritage to the forefront of legal debate in Europe and beyond.Footnote ¹¹¹

The return of the “Benin’s Bronzes” constitutes a paradigmatic case study. The Benin Kingdom in modern-day Nigeria was one of the last independent African kingdoms. As its king (Oba) refused to allow Britain’s Royal Niger Company to set up a trading monopoly in the region, and in reprisal for a military skirmish, British soldiers conducted a military expedition against Benin’s City in 1897.Footnote ¹¹² They seized all royal treasures, burned Benin City’s palace, and exiled the Oda.Footnote ¹¹³ Collectively described as the “Benin’s Bronzes,” the looted cultural items included several thousands of metal sculptures and ivory and wooden objects. The booty was then sold off in London to recover the costs of the expedition and ended up dispersed across many museums in the UK, the rest of Europe, and the USA.Footnote ¹¹⁴ In requesting the return of Benin’s Bronzes, Nigeria’s culture minister, Lai Mohammed, pointed out that “[t]hese are not just objects of beauty … [t]hese are artifacts that speak to who we are and that speak to our history, our religion, our values, and ethics.”Footnote ¹¹⁵ In fact, many artifacts depict the Benin Kingdom’s early history, and they are the only remaining sources of such information. By portraying the Kingdom’s obas and queens and episodes of Benin’s history, the Benin bronzes constitute Nigeria’s visual archive and portray its rich precolonial history. They thus counter the colonial narratives that Africa has no such history.Footnote ¹¹⁶ In the words of Benin’s Oba, the bronzes “were not originally meant to be mere museum pieces simply to be displayed for art lovers to admire. They were objects with religious and archival value to my people.” Accordingly, if they remained abroad, they would be like “pages torn off from the book of a people’s life history.”Footnote ¹¹⁷

The Benin Bronzes play a central role and can constitute a “game changer” in the restitution movement.Footnote ¹¹⁸ They have triggered a “domino effect” with more and more museums and states willing to return such items regardless of the modalities of their acquisition.Footnote ¹¹⁹ The return of colonial artifacts “is not only contemplated by countries … involved in forcible takings, but also by countries which acquired objects through market transactions.”Footnote ¹²⁰ In 2019, the University of Cambridge agreed to return more than one hundred items to Nigeria.Footnote ¹²¹ In 2022, Germany and Nigeria signed an agreement for returning 1130 Benin’s Bronzes to the latter.Footnote ¹²² In 2022, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art returned 29 Benin Bronzes to Nigeria.Footnote ¹²³ More significantly, negotiations on restitution are becoming more common, and “state practice seems to be undergoing a reorientation.”Footnote ¹²⁴ Accordingly, scholars have highlighted that “the emerging practice of giving back artifacts from colonial contexts … is increasingly gaining momentum.”Footnote ¹²⁵ Governments and museums largely recognize the importance of returning colonial-era artifacts. For some scholars, customary law is emerging that requires the return of cultural objects to their state of origin if the removal took place in conditions of “substantive injustice.” For Scovazzi, war and colonial domination are typical cases of substantive injustice from which states and third parties should not draw a cultural gain.Footnote ¹²⁶

Broadly endorsed by the United Nations,Footnote ¹²⁷ the return of cultural objects is of great significance to African states for several reasons. First, it seems appropriate to address historical injustice by returning an item to its legitimate owner if the item was looted or misappropriated during colonial times.Footnote ¹²⁸ Second, newly independent countries have used reassembled museums as instruments to “restore the[ir] agency as producers of their own history.”Footnote ¹²⁹ By reconnecting to their cultural heritage, African countries can restore access to their “blocked memories,” “identities[,] and histories.”Footnote ¹³⁰ As Seretse Khama (1921–1980), former President of Botswana, highlighted, “We should write our own history books to prove that we did have a past and that it was a past that was just as worth writing and learning about as any other. We must do this for the simple reason that a nation without a past is a lost nation, and a people without a past is a people without a soul.”Footnote ¹³¹ In other words, the return of cultural items is not a luxury for Africa, as such items constitute the “historical foundations for constructing … a new, dynamic, modern Africa.”Footnote ¹³² Third, the return of African heritage can contribute to “a cultural renaissance on the continent,” enabling the creation of new museums and fulfilling the cultural rights of local communities.Footnote ¹³³ The repatriation, reassembly, and display of cultural items can contribute to “the regeneration of social bonds,” strengthen societal well-being and resilience, and foster cultural creativity.Footnote ¹³⁴ This can promote intercultural dialogue, pacify multi-ethnic societies, and build national unity. Finally, restitution can also repair, restore, and establish new international relations based on intercultural understanding, mutual respect, justice, and equity.Footnote ¹³⁵

In the past decades, worthwhile efforts have been undertaken to improve existing legislation and adhere to and implement UNESCO Conventions.Footnote ¹³⁶ Scholars have called for strengthening such legal frameworks and drafting inventories and accurate descriptions of cultural heritage.Footnote ¹³⁷ Nonetheless, due to the legacies of colonialism, official heritage management in Africa continues to be predominantly based on colonial legal models that do not capture the complex and multilayered dimensions of African cultural heritage.Footnote ¹³⁸ Whether belonging to the Roman law or common law tradition, African states have tended to enact cultural heritage laws, often drawing upon European models.Footnote ¹³⁹

While increased recognition has been given to the rights of communities, much remains to be done across the continent to enhance their role in cultural heritage management. The forced relocation of local communities living in or close to World Heritage Sites has been problematic. For instance, in the Ogiek case, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights condemned the forced eviction of the Ogieks, a Kenyan hunter-gatherer Indigenous community, from their ancestral lands. The government had evicted them from the World Heritage Site Mau Forest, in Kenya’s Rift Valley, for conservation reasons.Footnote ¹⁴⁰ The Court held that the government had violated several of the Ogieks’ rights under the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, including their rights to freedom of religion and culture, to the free disposal of wealth and natural resources, and to economic, social, and cultural development.Footnote ¹⁴¹ Similarly, in Botswana, the government relocated San and Bantu Indigenous peoples from their ancestral land after this became the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.Footnote ¹⁴²

Even though colonialism ended,Footnote ¹⁴³ cultural decolonization is difficult to achieve due to cultural globalization, bio-piracy, and various forms of cultural appropriation.Footnote ¹⁴⁴ Cultural globalization refers to a process of growing standardization of cultural expressions around the world and a trend toward cultural homogeneity. Let us be clear: no culture is an island, and anthropologists generally agree that “cultures are hybrid, overlapping and creole” and constantly changing.Footnote ¹⁴⁵ Moreover, not only can people “participate in multiple cultures at once,” but all cultures constitute the common heritage of humankind. That said, predominant cultures risk jeopardizing valuable local cultural diversity.Footnote ¹⁴⁶

Bio-piracy refers to the unauthorized appropriation of local knowledge and genetic resources by corporations seeking monopoly control through intellectual property rights. In the past decades, multinational pharmaceutical corporations have misappropriated traditional medical knowledge without recognizing the role of local communities in preserving and developing such knowledge.Footnote ¹⁴⁷ Partly as a result of the absence of a comprehensive international regulation of traditional medicinal knowledge,Footnote ¹⁴⁸ they have sought access to the active physical components of medical plants and relevant traditional knowledge (TK) without respect for their wider cultural and spiritual context and without compensating or remunerating the traditional holders of such TK.Footnote ¹⁴⁹ For instance, the Hoodia cactus, traditionally used as an appetite suppressant by the San of Southern Africa, was used for developing an anti-obesity treatment without remunerating the San.Footnote ¹⁵⁰

Similarly, cultural appropriations “involving the taking of cultural elements by cultural outsiders”Footnote ¹⁵¹ have taken place in the fashion and music industries.Footnote ¹⁵² Fashion stylists and musicians have plagiarized African textile patterns and music, respectively, often without due acknowledgement and the prior consent of relevant communities.Footnote ¹⁵³ While “ethnic communities … demand better recognition and protection of their traditional musical expressions,” for too long, international intellectual property law regarded such works as “public domain and therefore free for all to use.”Footnote ¹⁵⁴ The recent adoption of the Treaty on Intellectual Property, Genetic Resources, and Traditional Knowledge may constitute a paradigm change, but it is too early to say.Footnote ¹⁵⁵

In conclusion, international and African cultural heritage laws have evolved using European concepts of cultural heritage protection.Footnote ¹⁵⁶ As a result, they are not particularly suited to address current African challenges and fully exploit the related opportunities.Footnote ¹⁵⁷ Moreover, since independence, not all African countries have taken the opportunity to revise their legal frameworks.Footnote ¹⁵⁸ Future research in the field should explore ways to adapt or use the existing legal frameworks to promote cultural protection and sustainable development in Africa.

Conceptualizing the African Renaissance

While most former colonies have gradually achieved independence, economic, social, and cultural decolonization remains incomplete. A state of coloniality persists, expressing the continuation of colonial-like relations after the dismantlement of direct colonialism.Footnote ¹⁵⁹ To address this conundrum and fulfill the promise of self-determination, the African Renaissance concept “has captured the imagination of … the African continent”Footnote ¹⁶⁰ since the demise of Apartheid in South Africa and guides the ambitious objectives of the African Union,Footnote ¹⁶¹ simultaneously “looking back and forward.”Footnote ¹⁶²

The African Renaissance specifically expresses “an idea and a project, a discourse and a process.”Footnote ¹⁶³ In order to clarify its meaning, this section first identifies its intellectual gist as an idea and then explores its current significance as an ongoing process. The noun “renaissance” derives from the analogous French word meaning rebirth and the Latin verb renasci meaning “to rise again, reawaken, be renewed.”Footnote ¹⁶⁴ The concept indicates a dynamic process, a phase of vital energy, and “the revival of lost, marginalized, or forgotten culture, philosophy, literature, and science.”Footnote ¹⁶⁵

In the European context, the Renaissance paradigmatically refers to a cultural movement between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity. It was characterized by an effort to revive and go beyond the ideas and achievements of classical antiquity after a long period of foreign invasions, economic stagnation, and natural disasters, including the Black Death of 1348–50, which wiped out a third of the continent’s population. During the Renaissance, the discovery of the classical past restored people’s confidence in their skills, provoked inquiry, and encouraged criticism. By shattering the mental barriers imposed by medieval orthodoxies, new worldviews emerged, simultaneously reawakening the arts and sciences. The Renaissance was a period of great creativity and renewal that marked a turning point in European culture.Footnote ¹⁶⁶

Can the concept of renaissance be applied to Africa? Some arguments run against such use. A closer look at the Renaissance reveals that this period was not an idyllic time; rather, various “contradictions” characterized it, including power struggles, political unrest, bloody rivalries, religious wars, economic inequalities, and widespread diseases.Footnote ¹⁶⁷ Many historians have now moved away from regarding the Renaissance as a period, preferring the “early modern” terminology because it looks more precise.Footnote ¹⁶⁸ New technologies developed during this period enabled Europeans to explore new territories. These explorations paved the way for the later development of colonialism. Finally, the concept of renaissance seems to be top-down and elitist. As the decision to write in English carries political implications,Footnote ¹⁶⁹ so does the use of the term renaissance. It raises the question of whether the notion could backfire by introducing unintended effects on the continent.

However, the word “renaissance” is now commonly used to explain turning points in various fields.Footnote ¹⁷⁰ Just as, for the sake of accessibility and the dissemination of knowledge, English is the common language used in academia, the renaissance concept now commonly refers to “a revival of, or renewal of interest in, something” and the process by which this becomes strong and active again.Footnote ¹⁷¹ Scholars from different geographical areas have reinterpreted the concept of renaissance, adapting it to their contexts.

In the USA, for instance, the Harlem Renaissance refers to an African American cultural movement that flourished a century ago in Harlem, New York City. Between the end of World War I and the mid-1930s, it was one of the most significant eras of cultural expression in the history of the USA. The Harlem Renaissance encompassed literature, the arts, jazz, and dance. What united these diverse art forms was their self-portrait of African American life, identity, and culture, as well as a new strength in claiming their civil and political rights.Footnote ¹⁷²

At the end of the Cold War, the former United Nations Secretary-General and Egyptian diplomat, Boutros Boutros Ghali (1922–2016), called for a renaissance of international law to transform the world scene. He believed that “international law provide[s] a means of common progress and a common language for international dialogue [t]ranscending political, ideological, and cultural divisions.” Ghali argued that a renaissance of international law was needed to help reshape the world.Footnote ¹⁷³

These two examples show that various renaissances have often reflected themes of cultural renewal, anti-hegemonic struggle, and the pursuit of freedom. The lights and shadows associated with the Renaissance as a period are a common aspect of human history, highlighting the complex messiness of life. To counter any hegemonic bias, it is thus crucial to reference scholars from different geographical areas, use sources in various languages, and include counter-hegemonic works. This approach should be critical, integrative, intercultural, and interdisciplinary.Footnote ¹⁷⁴ Therefore, it seems appropriate to broaden international lawyers’ traditional conceptual universes by exploring African perspectives.Footnote ¹⁷⁵

African intellectuals and policymakers regard the African Renaissance as a tool “from Africans for Africans,” proposing an “African model for playing a part in a globalized world.”Footnote ¹⁷⁶ They have repeatedly called for the African Renaissance, expressing “a search for origins and roots … in the quest for African dignity and identity.”Footnote ¹⁷⁷ For instance, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and former South African President Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) called for Africa’s “renewal,” a transition from a historical stage to the next.Footnote ¹⁷⁸ The renaissance metaphor expresses “a reawakening of the vigor and vitality of African existence”Footnote ¹⁷⁹ and aims to recover the values of Africa’s complex history, geography, and culture that are worthy of preservation and continuation.Footnote ¹⁸⁰ It is also “a genuine attempt to transcend Africa’s dark ages” of foreign domination, heal the wounds, and liberate Africa from coloniality, that is, the unwanted political, cultural, and economic relics of colonialism. It is “a call to transcend the entire epoch of apartheid, colonialism, imperialism, slavery, and racism that preceded the present”Footnote ¹⁸¹ to enable its people to determine their destiny.Footnote ¹⁸² Most discourses by African thinkers and leaders endorse the idea of the African Renaissance.Footnote ¹⁸³

The African renaissance does not entail a return to the irrecoverable past. It is “not an attempt to resuscitate a heritage of past values irrelevant to the modernizing preoccupation of contemporary Africa; an abstract … vindication of a pre-colonial culture or history; a mere backward-looking nostalgia.”Footnote ¹⁸⁴ Rather, it is a process of preparation and tentative endeavor that builds upon Africa’s rich cultural heritage to open the door to the future. With such a rich history and heritage, what matters is the present (in German Jetztzeit, in Latin nunc stans), the historical here and now (in Latin, hic et nunc), a time that is ripe with revolutionary possibility.Footnote ¹⁸⁵ The African Renaissance is not a romanticized, simplistic, or merely desirable ideal, “a collective prayer,” or a “perpetual dream” but a “determined battle” to reclaim Africa’s history, humanity, heritage, and “a will to sustainable development.”Footnote ¹⁸⁶ It is a historical potential that has not yet become history but which can become history. It includes political, economic, and cultural dimensions.

At the political and economic levels, the concept of the African Renaissance aims to start a new era following decolonization and envisages new ways of imagining Africa’s place in the world. Popularized by the Senegalese historian Cheikh Anta Diop in the mid-1940s,Footnote ¹⁸⁷ the concept of the African Renaissance simultaneously looks for continental union and a new role for Africa in international relations.Footnote ¹⁸⁸ It includes the promotion of democratization and political accountability, calls for peace, security, and stability on the continent (Pax Africana), the protection of human and peoples’ rights, and the promotion of sustainable development, good health, and gender equality on the continent.Footnote ¹⁸⁹ It thus offers “new ways of thinking.”Footnote ¹⁹⁰

At the cultural level, the African Renaissance entails the safeguarding of the continent’s heritage, history, philosophy, literature, and the arts.Footnote ¹⁹¹ Not only has the African Union adopted the Charter for the African Cultural Renaissance,Footnote ¹⁹² but this term also appears in several of its policy instruments. The Charter for African Cultural Renaissance highlights that culture constitutes “the surest means to chart Africa’s own course towards … development and the most efficient response to the challenges of globalization.”Footnote ¹⁹³ Therefore, the goal of the African Renaissance is not only to promote pride in Africa’s history, heritage, and traditions but also to turn these into cultural resources or useful intellectual tools for moving forward.Footnote ¹⁹⁴ Rooted in the African Renaissance, the African Union’s Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want provides a blueprint for a prosperous, politically united, and culturally rich Africa that combines inclusion, productivity, and sustainable development. In particular, a key aspiration of Agenda 2063 is the creation of an African continent “with a strong cultural identity, common heritage, values, and ethics.” Prominent goals include the African cultural renaissance, safeguarding of Africa’s cultural heritage, and promoting the creative arts.Footnote ¹⁹⁵ While cultural heritage embodies different values and can serve different political, economic, and social objectives in various contexts, it is essential to the human experience.Footnote ¹⁹⁶

The African Renaissance and Sustainable Development

Since independence, development has been a top priority of African states. Early conceptualizations of development focused on “economic transformation and growth” and regarded “culture and nature … as obstacles to modernization and progress.”Footnote ¹⁹⁷ Development projects often clashed with the protection of cultural and natural heritage. Policymakers often regarded heritage as a luxury. For example, following the decision to construct the Aswan Dam for Egypt’s developmental purposes, the heritage sites in the Nile Valley would not have been rescued without the important campaign to save them.Footnote ¹⁹⁸

Nowadays, a more holistic understanding of sustainable development has emerged in Africa. African scholars have elaborated views of “development” that go beyond purely economic growth and quantitative approaches.Footnote ¹⁹⁹ They have challenged, redefined, and reengineered development theories and practices, envisaging alternative ways of development and considering qualitative elements.Footnote ²⁰⁰ Drawing on African epistemologies, they have called for new social imaginaries that challenge the boundaries separating the economic, social, and cultural spheres.Footnote ²⁰¹ They have defined development as “the process of a country moving towards greater inclusion, health, opportunity, justice, freedom, fairness, forgiveness, and cultural expression.”Footnote ²⁰² In other words, African approaches to development regard development as a multilayered concept that takes into account the social, environmental, and cultural heritage of the continent.

African comprehensive understandings of development parallel and mirror international developments concerning sustainable development. The 1986 Declaration on the Right to Development regards development as “a comprehensive economic, social, cultural and political process.”Footnote ²⁰³ As elaborated by the World Commission on the Environment and Development, the seminal 1987 Brundtland report defines sustainable development as a development that “meet[s] the present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”Footnote ²⁰⁴ While “the dominant development model” primarily focused on economic concerns, a new development model has emerged, including social and environmental considerations.Footnote ²⁰⁵ Accordingly, sustainable development has three pillars – economic growth, social inclusion, and environmental balance.

Since the 1980s, UNESCO has pushed for a “multidimensional understanding of development” integrating culture.Footnote ²⁰⁶ Nonetheless, at the international level, culture as the fourth pillar of sustainable development “has yet to gain the traction of the other three and therefore remains understudied.”Footnote ²⁰⁷ The United Nations has also acknowledged that “the central importance of culture is … insufficiently present in development policy and practice.”Footnote ²⁰⁸ The Millennium Development GoalsFootnote ²⁰⁹ “addressed the role of culture in sustainable development in a very limited fashion.”Footnote ²¹⁰ Analogously, the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)Footnote ²¹¹ make little reference to cultural concerns.Footnote ²¹² Negotiators feared that inserting cultural considerations could hijack the adoption or implementation of the SDGs. As a consequence, not only do the SDGs lack a dedicated culture-related goal, but they also mention culture only three times and cultural heritage only once. For instance, the protection of “world cultural and natural heritage is pigeonholed into SDG 11 concerning cities.”Footnote ²¹³

Instead, African notions of development go beyond current international conceptualizations as they recognize the centrality of culture in any meaningful development discourse. At the heart of the Charter for African Cultural Renaissance lies the objective of sustainable development, valorizing local and cultural specificities. Defined as “the set of distinctive linguistic, spiritual, material, intellectual, and emotional features of the society” that “encompasses, in addition to art and literature, lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions, and beliefs,”Footnote ²¹⁴ culture plays a central role in contemporary African approaches to sustainable development. Already in the 1975 final declaration of the Intergovernmental Conference on Cultural Policies in Africa, African states affirmed their willingness “to give culture the decisive position which it should rightfully occupy in the process of global development, of which man is both the agent and the end.”Footnote ²¹⁵ References to “the importance of culture both as a driver and enabler for sustainable development” abound in contemporary African legal and policy instrumentsFootnote ²¹⁶ as African countries regard cultural heritage as a “factor of social progress” and a “driving force for innovation.”Footnote ²¹⁷After recalling that African culture provided African peoples “the necessary strength for resistance and the liberation of the continent,”Footnote ²¹⁸ the Charter for African Cultural Renaissance considers it “a factor of equilibrium [and] strength” conducive to development.Footnote ²¹⁹ It also affirms that “culture constitutes … the surest means to chart Africa’s own course towards technological development and the most efficient response to the challenges of globalization.”Footnote ²²⁰

The central role that culture plays in African conceptualizations of sustainable development is not due to serendipity but expresses deeply-held African worldviews. The cultural systems of African countries emphasize a direct connection between the individual and the collective and a holistic relationship between human beings and the environment. In African cultures, the community, including ancestors and future generations, is the center of human relations, and a person is always seen in relation to others.Footnote ²²¹ Accordingly, a community constitutes a communion of souls rather than an aggregate of individuals.Footnote ²²² Moreover, as ancestors are identified with the land, by extension, nature is also considered part of the community, and human beings and nature are regarded as parts of a whole.Footnote ²²³

In conclusion, in the past decades, there has been a shift from conceptualizing development in purely economic terms to considering it holistically as an economic, social, environmental, and cultural process. African conceptualizations of sustainable development go beyond international standards and prioritize the cultural dimension of development. Accordingly, the valorization of local cultural values and the recovery of ideas from the past can transform human conditions today for good and enable an African Renaissance. Conservation and development are regarded as “entangled processes” that can mutually support each other.Footnote ²²⁴

Can the African Renaissance goal come true? Can international cultural heritage law contribute to the realization of the African Renaissance and the advancement of sustainable development in Africa? As a notion established by African thinkers and subsequently endorsed by the African Union, the African Renaissance is a project and a process that poses both conceptual and concrete challenges. It does not oppose international cultural heritage law or view it as an instant solution to African development issues. Rather, it requires a reevaluation of global cultural governance to guarantee that it can serve as a mechanism for the cultural re-empowerment, sustainable development, and general welfare of the African continent. In turn, African countries can help reshape global cultural governance through their active involvement in the negotiation, ratification, and implementation of international cultural heritage law. To check this, the next section focuses on world heritage governance as a site of contestation and reform.

African World Heritage and International Law

The 1972 World Heritage Convention (WHC) is the most successful UNESCO instrument, as it has been ratified by 196 states.Footnote ²²⁵ It establishes a system of international cooperation and assistance that supports States Parties to the Convention in their efforts to conserve world heritage, that is, natural and cultural sites of outstanding and universal value that are included in special lists. States are eager to propose sites for inscription in the List; a listed site gains international recognition, prestige, and legal protection and can obtain financial assistance from the World Heritage Fund to facilitate its conservation under certain conditions.Footnote ²²⁶ Additionally, the local communities living around a site may benefit from heightened public awareness, significantly increased tourism, and economic development.Footnote ²²⁷

The WHC has been ratified by all African countries. Although Africa’s heritage spans from the origins of humankind to various contemporary examples, Africa remains underrepresented on the World Heritage List. Even the calculation of its sites is not straightforward as UNESCO’s regional classification places several North African countries (namely, Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia, and Western Sahara) in the “Arab States” region, while world heritage sites on islands are included in the “Europe and North America” region with their respective metropolitan states. For UNESCO, sub-Saharan Africa has 108 inscriptions, representing 9% of the total.Footnote ²²⁸ For the African World Heritage Fund, the continent as a whole has 139 inscriptions on the List, representing 12% of the total.Footnote ²²⁹ While several African countries, including Burundi, Comoros, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Eswatini, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, São Tomé and Príncipe, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and South Sudan have not inscribed any sites yet in the List,Footnote ²³⁰ other African countries have actively engaged with the World Heritage Convention and the opportunities it offers. For instance, Ethiopia and South Africa each have 12 world heritage sites inscribed in the list.Footnote ²³¹

Simultaneously, sub-Saharan Africa is overrepresented in the List of World Heritage in Danger. Common threats affecting African world heritage sites include various effects of climate change, like droughts, flooding, extreme temperatures, and a decline in biodiversity. Anthropogenic factors influencing African world heritage sites include deforestation, conflicts, natural resource extraction, construction works, and development activities.Footnote ²³² Out of 56 properties that the World Heritage Committee has decided to include on the List of World Heritage in Danger, listing properties facing threats with deleterious effects on their inherent characteristics, 21 are African sites, representing 37.5% of the total.Footnote ²³³ The inscription of a site on the List of World Heritage in Danger requires the World Heritage Committee to develop and adopt, in consultation with the State Party concerned, a program for corrective measures and subsequently monitor the situation of the site. However, this does not always lead to fuller protection of the sites. Sites can be permanently deleted from the List after losing their inherent characteristics.Footnote ²³⁴

In 2006, the African World Heritage Fund was established to support the effective conservation and protection of natural and cultural heritage of outstanding universal value in Africa in response to the unique pressures on sites on the continent. Hosted by the South African government on behalf of the continent, the Fund is an inter-governmental organization and a partner of UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre. It aims to help African countries identify and list African heritage sites on the World Heritage List, manage heritage sites in Africa, rehabilitate sites inscribed on the List of World Heritage in Danger, train heritage experts, and involve communities in decisions concerning their heritage.

African countries can also receive some funding from the UNESCO World Heritage Fund that can grant some limited international financial assistance for projects to address conservation and management needs at World Heritage sites. Of all international assistance granted since the inception of the World Heritage Fund in 1978, almost a third (27%) has been allocated to African countries.Footnote ²³⁵ In 2016, UNESCO launched the annual African World Heritage Day to raise global awareness of African heritage and to foster enhanced cooperation for its safeguarding on the local, regional, and global levels.Footnote ²³⁶ Yet, the proportion of African World Heritage Sites has not increased notably, nor has the number of “in danger” sites been significantly reduced.Footnote ²³⁷

Because, until recently, the WHC privileged a monumental conception of heritage, it ended up favoring the inscription of European sites on the World Heritage list, thus failing to fully appreciate the different manifestations of natural heritage in Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Oceania.Footnote ²³⁸ As natural heritage plays a fundamental role in African countries, Africa’s contribution to world heritage tends to be underestimated. Nonetheless, things are starting to change: “calls for greater contextualization of heritage management practices in terms of their respective cultural contexts … have predominantly emanated from Asia and Oceania, but they have potentially profound implications for the African continent.”Footnote ²³⁹ In fact, many African heritage sites “gain meaning through cultural and religious practices,” and a “holistic understanding of African heritage” should be adopted for expanding listing opportunities.Footnote ²⁴⁰ Moreover, since “communities living at or near heritage places may have been custodians of these sites for generations,” they should be included in heritage management, overcoming the colonial approach to such management that separates communities from their natural heritage.Footnote ²⁴¹ Inclusion, through the effective participation of people in the decision-making process, is a necessary requirement under Principle 10 of the 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development and for the effective enjoyment of cultural rights.Footnote ²⁴² Article 15 of the 2006 Charter for African Cultural Renaissance provides for “access and participation of all in culture, including marginalized and underprivileged communities.”

Article 12 of the World Heritage Convention concerns the protection of properties not inscribed on the World Heritage List, expressing the principle that a cultural or natural property may be of outstanding universal value even if not inscribed in the list and thus deserves safeguarding. In relation to African heritage, this provision raises many questions concerning three types of heritage: 1) the artifacts left by the colonists in the former colonies; 2) “difficult heritage,” including sites that record past atrocities (such as genocide);Footnote ²⁴³ and 3) African Liberation Heritage that is a type of heritage that celebrates freedom from colonization.

First, as Europeans colonized the African landscape, leaving toponyms, buildings, and statues behind, questions arise as to whether such “contested” or “dissonant” heritage should be protected or not.Footnote ²⁴⁴ Usually, such heritage bears witness to the crimes of the occupying regime and is often associated with traumatic experiences.Footnote ²⁴⁵ It can be seen as material relics of empire: can its removal promote decolonization, or does it destroy African heritage? How do African countries address “the enduring material presence of statues, steles, monuments, and other effigies of the colonial past”?Footnote ²⁴⁶ Do “principles of transitional justice imply that we should take down statues and rename places called after people who participated in serious rights abuses”? Or should “contested heritage” remain in place, “as part of truth telling and acknowledgement, and as pedagogical tools for vividly teaching the history in question, to support the aims of nonrecurrence”?Footnote ²⁴⁷

African states’ reactions differ; while some states have removed or destroyed such artifacts, other countries have reinterpreted and repurposed them. In Zimbabwe, the country’s colonial heritage in the form of old farmhouses with large verandas and neo-classical facades has been preserved, despite arguments against their preservation.Footnote ²⁴⁸ Since Algerian independence in 1962, the French Army “selectively dismantled relevant military statues and war memorials” and moved them to France.Footnote ²⁴⁹ The war memorials and monuments that remained in Algeria were “conserved, destroyed, or replaced.”Footnote ²⁵⁰ In 1974, Muammar Qaddafi, then Revolutionary Chairman of the Libyan Arab Republic, promptly blew up a triumphal arch built in 1937 by fascist colonial architects.Footnote ²⁵¹ In Cape Town, a successful student movement resulted in the statue of imperialist John Cecil Rhodes being removed from the University of Cape Town campus.Footnote ²⁵² In turn, Eritrea has conserved Asmara’s colonial-era architecture. This constitutes “a profoundly different attitude towards architectural heritage” compared with other post-colonial settings.Footnote ²⁵³ Because of Eritrea’s complex postcolonial experiences, for Eritreans, their capital, Asmara, has “an existential significance.” Moreover, many colonial buildings have been creatively repurposed. These factors ultimately led Eritreans to forge a new, empowering cultural history and inscribe their beloved capital on the World Heritage List.Footnote ²⁵⁴

Second, the question of whether a “difficult heritage” can or should be inscribed in the World Heritage List is a highly political matter. Historically significant sites, buildings, artworks, and monuments can be difficult to reconcile with “a positive, self-affirming contemporary identity.”Footnote ²⁵⁵ They may constitute dissonant heritage that encapsulates “history that hurts.” Certain World Heritage sites recall genocides or other breaches of jus cogens norms such as Apartheid, slavery, and the slave trade. Yet, adding these memorial sites that recall human suffering to the List can play a role in transitional justice and peacebuilding. In 2023, the Rwandan Memorial Sites of the Genocide were inscribed on the List to commemorate the million people killed by armed militias over 100 days in 1994.Footnote ²⁵⁶ In South Africa, Robben Island was used at various times between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries as a hospital for people with leprosy and mental illness, a military base during WWII, and the maximum security prison for political prisoners, including Nelson Mandela. As soon as South African people rejected the inhuman Apartheid regime, the former prison was closed, and the island became the symbol of “the triumph of democracy and freedom over oppression and racism.”Footnote ²⁵⁷ Since 1999, the island has been inscribed in the World Heritage List. From the fifteenth to the nineteenth century, the Island of Gorée, off the coast of Senegal, was “the largest slave-trading centre on the African coast.” Since 1978, the island has been inscribed on the World Heritage List, serving as “a reminder of human exploitation and as a sanctuary for reconciliation.”Footnote ²⁵⁸ Analogously, the Castles and Forts of Ghana constitute a powerful reminder of “the evils of the slave trade,” also attesting “the continuing history of European-African encounter over five centuries and the starting point of the African Diaspora.” Inscribed in the List since 1979, they “shaped not only Ghana’s history but that of the world.”Footnote ²⁵⁹

Third, African Liberation Heritage sites have been increasingly safeguarded. In 2007, the African Union and UNESCO launched the “Roads to Independence—African Liberation Heritage Programme.” This valuable program aimed to acknowledge the importance of liberation movements to the decolonization of the continent.Footnote ²⁶⁰ Nowadays, there is renewed interest in further inscribing more such World Heritage sites.Footnote ²⁶¹ The African lead to inscribe such sites on the List can pave the way for further similar inscriptions in other continents. For instance, in 2024, 14 places in South Africa were inscribed on the World Heritage List. They all relate to the country’s political history in the twentieth century and reflect key events linked to the long struggle against Apartheid and Mandela’s influence in promoting understanding, forgiveness, equality, and ubuntu.Footnote ²⁶² Slightly differently, but still epitomizing a noble human fight for freedom, Le Morne Cultural Landscape, a mountain jutting into the Indian Ocean in Mauritius, was used as a shelter by runaway slaves, the maroons, through the eighteenth and early years of the nineteenth centuries.Footnote ²⁶³ Protected by the mountain’s almost inaccessible cliffs, the escaped slaves formed small settlements, making Le Morne “a symbol of the slaves’ fight for freedom, their suffering, and their sacrifice.”Footnote ²⁶⁴

Valuable scholarly research has been undertaken on transboundary world heritage sites in Africa:Footnote ²⁶⁵ transboundary cooperation may be needed due to the colonial legacies of the uti possidetis rule. As known, colonial powers divided Africa irrespective of geographical, historical, and ethnic features, thus creating unnatural boundaries that do not reflect realities on the ground.Footnote ²⁶⁶ This fosters the need for transboundary cultural cooperation in Africa.

Future research could investigate the promises and pitfalls of listing African heritage sites on the World Heritage List, whether there are ways to expand the presence of African sites on the List, and whether the World Heritage Convention adequately protects African heritage of universal value. The specific challenges and major threats to the effective management and conservation of World Heritage sites in Africa deserve further scrutiny. Additional research questions concern the interplay between world heritage protection on the one hand and the fulfillment of human and peoples’ rights and sustainable development in Africa on the other.