France has formally returned the Djidji Ayôkwé a sacred talking drum seized from Côte d’Ivoire during the colonial era to its people on Friday, March 13, 2026, in a landmark act of cultural restitution.
The massive carved wooden drum, once used by the Atchan people of the Abidjan region to communicate between villages, was looted by French colonial authorities in 1916 and is among at least 140 artifacts Ivory Coast has asked France to return.
Measuring ten feet in length and weighing 940 pounds, the drum features a slit soundbox, a carved jumping leopard, and decorative geometric patterns and was historically used to transmit messages, including warnings of impending raids by French colonial troops.
The repatriation was the result of years of diplomatic effort and required a significant change in French law. France’s National Assembly passed special legislation on July 7, 2025, unanimously authorizing the drum’s restitution, as French law traditionally bars the removal of objects from national collections a principle known as inaliénabilité.
The repatriation process also required consultations with Atchan traditional leaders, who traveled to Paris to perform rituals lifting the drum’s sacred status so it could be safely restored and transported. For those communities, the moment was deeply emotional. Aboussou Guy Mobio, chief of the village of Adjamé-Bingerville, described the return as “the missing piece of our history coming back.”
The drum arrived in Abidjan aboard a specially chartered plane and was received by Côte d’Ivoire’s Culture Minister Françoise Remarck, who called it “a moment of justice and remembrance.”
The artifact will undergo a monthlong acclimatization period in a secure location to allow the centuries-old wood to gradually adjust from Paris’s dry climate to Abidjan’s humid tropical conditions before going on public display in April at the newly renovated Museum of Civilizations.
The return is widely seen as part of a broader, still-unfinished reckoning, as Côte d’Ivoire continues to press France for the repatriation of scores of other cultural treasures taken during colonial rule.
