The Netherlands and Germany agree to return more than 2,000 cultural artefacts to Ghana

Ghana’s foreign affairs minister, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, announced that the Netherlands and Germany intend to return more than 2,000 cultural objects taken unlawfully during colonial conquests. At the Next Steps Conference in Accra (17–19 June), Dutch ambassador Jeroen Verheul symbolically handed a catalogue of 2,000 objects the Netherlands plans to return to Ghana’s president, John Dramani Mahama, while Germany has identified items linked to the Kpando traditional area for return. The conference sought actionable commitments following a UN resolution passed on 26 March—led by Ghana—declaring the transatlantic slave trade the “gravest crime against humanity,” and included speakers such as Barbados prime minister Mia Amor Mottely and Senegal president Bassirou Diomaye Faye, plus a recorded message from French president Emmanuel Macron. Ablakwa also said Denmark agreed to help preserve Accra’s Christiansborg Castle, built in 1661, as evidence of slave-trade atrocities, amid broader European policy shifts in recent years to ease restitution to countries including Ghana, Benin, and Nigeria.

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