Ugandan charms (Mayembe) and traditonal wear (Kanzu) are among the items a team of experts visiting the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA) in England have identified. They will be listed for repatriation to Kampala next year.
Uganda’s Commissioner for Monuments and Museums Rose Mwanja Nkaale, and the Curator, Nelson Abiti, together with Derek Peterson, a professor of History and African Studies at the University of Michigan, are currently in Cambridgeshire going through the MAA collection to identify objects they will prioritize for repatriation.
This is the first stage in a new project dubbed “Repositioning the Uganda Museum” aimed at securing the repatriation of historically and culturally important objects, from Cambridge, to Uganda’s museum in Kampala.
This project was recently awarded a $100,000 (Sh356millin) grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation based in the US. The key aim of the project is to repatriate several dozen artefacts, a small subset of the hundreds of thousands of objects taken from Africa in the colonial era.
“We are presently going through the MAA collection, and Nelson and Rose are beginning to identify objects that they’d want to prioritize for repatriation. Once they have a list, we will begin working with colleagues in Cambridge on the mechanics of returning these materials to Uganda,” said Professor Derek Peterson in a message early today.
Prof. Peterson added that “the hope is to have the objects in Uganda in 2023, after which we’ll conduct research with Ugandan families and professionals about their history and background. All of this will lead to a special exhibition, in Kampala, in 2024, where we’ll showcase these objects and tell their story fully.”
According to the Michigan University website, the items were collected and donated to MAA by the late British anthropologist and missionary Rev John Roscoe.
Roscoe (1861–1932) was a missionary from the Anglican Missionary Society to East Africa.
The Cambridge museum is said to hold around 1,400 separate ethnographic objects from Uganda, many of them acquired by Roscoe. Others were donated by Buganda Kingdom’s then Katikkiro (prime minister), Sir Apolo Kaggwa (1890-1926). Most of Roscoe’s collection has not been displayed in Cambridge
