Adopted unanimously on July 7, 2025 by the National Assembly, the law authorizing the return of the speaker “Djidji Ayôkwé” allows its return to Côte d’Ivoire within one year. The object will be withdrawn from the collections of the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, in accordance with the downgrading procedure.
This text marks a step in the process initiated since Emmanuel Macron’s speech at the Africa-France summit in 2021, where the president had committed to facilitate the restitutions of African objects. In November 2022, the drum was desecrated in the presence of Ebrié chefs, then restored. On November 18, 2024, a deposit agreement had been signed by the ministers of French and Ivorian culture, allowing the provisional transmission of the object before final restitution. The law had been approved by the Senate in November 2024, despite differences on the methods of restitution between the government and certain senators.
Cut into a single wooden block, the drum is 3.5 meters long and 0.78 meters in diameter and weighs approximately 430 kg. It is decorated with geometric patterns, carved faces and a leopard. Thanks to its resonance box, it can transmit sounds carried more than 20 kilometers.
Confiscated in 1916 by the colonial administrator Simon, who saw it as a tool of communication and resistance, the drum fulfilled a function that is both political, ritual and cultural. According to tradition, it would house a community spirit. Damaged by bad weather, he was transferred between 1929 and 1930 to the Trocadéro Museum by the ethnologist Paul Rivet, before being integrated into the collections of the Quai Branly museum in the 2000s. A first restitution request was made in 1958, two years before the independence of Côte d’Ivoire. In 2018, the object was at the top of a list of 148 works claimed by the Ivorian State.
In parallel, the Ivorian authorities led a reflection on the place of conservation of the object, between restitution to the Ebrié community and deposit in a national museum. The choice fell on the Museum of Civilizations in Abidjan, in order to ensure the accessibility of the object to the public and to make it a symbol. Museum extension works have been undertaken to accommodate the drum.
In the absence of a general law for the return of cultural goods in a colonial context, several ad hoc laws have been adopted in recent years. This is the case, in 2021, of the restitution in Benin of 26 objects from the royal treasures of Abomey, seized in 1892 by General Dodds, as well as a saber attributed to El Hadj Omar Tall, returned to Senegal in 2021 after being loaned in 2019.
The framework law, still in preparation, aims at the objects seized in the colonial context between 1815 and 1972. The Council of State expressed in February 2024 (according to The world) that the first project included legal defects, pointing to the insufficient criteria. According to the Minister of Culture Rachida Dati, a new text should be presented at the end of July 2025 for a parliamentary examination in the fall.
