ABIDJAN: The Djidji Ayokwe “talking drum,” which was looted by French colonial troops in 1916 and taken to France, arrived back in Ivory Coast Friday, in the latest repatriation of stolen artefacts.
The wooden drum, more than three meters (10 feet) long and weighing 430 kilos (950 pounds), was used by the Ebrie tribe to transmit messages.
It was officially handed over on Feb. 20 after France’s parliament approved removing the artifact from the national museum collections to enable its return.
Ivory Coast had asked in late 2018 for the return of the Djidji Ayokwe among 148 works of art taken during the colonial period.
It arrived aboard a specially chartered plane at Ivory Coast’s main city Abidjan and remained inside a huge wooden crate stamped “fragile,” AFP journalists saw.
