Germany and the Netherlands have agreed to return 2,000 culturally significant artifacts to Ghana, which were taken from the country during the colonial era. The announcement was made at Next Steps, a conference held last week in the Ghanaian capital of Accra.
The conference, hosted by John Dramani Mahama, the president of Ghana, was organized in response to the United Nations’ declaration, on March 25, 2026, that the trafficking of enslaved Africans and subsequent racialized chattel enslavement of Africans qualified as the “gravest crime against humanity.” The goal of the Next Steps conference was to translate the UN resolution into a “common framework of actionable commitments for a just and equitable world order.”
In a post on Facebook on June 20, the day after the conclusion of the conference, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, the foreign minister of Ghana, wrote that ambassadors from the Netherlands and Germany attended Next Steps and presented a catalogue of the items they will return to President Mahama. Ablakwa did not specify the specific types of artifacts, nor where they are currently being held. 3 News noted that “details on the timeline for the physical return of the artefacts, as well as plans for their reception and display in Ghana, are expected to be announced in due course.”
Ablakwa also noted in the post that the foreign minister of Denmark apologized for the country’s role in the transatlantic slave trade and “pledged to help preserve the castles they built as a good faith effort to prevent historical erasure, promote truth telling and guarantee non-repetition.”
Ghana has been ramping up pressure on European nations to return objects looted during the colonial era. In 2024, an exhibition opened at the Manhyia Palace in Kumasi, showcasing objects related to Asante culture that had recently made their way back to Ghana after about a century and half abroad.
The Netherlands has also been working towards returning artifacts to Africa that have long been held in its museum collections. In 2025, the country agreed to return 113 Benin bronzes from the Dutch State Collection to Nigeria, and, soon after the long-awaited opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza, the Dutch prime minister announced that the Netherlands will return a 3,500-year-old Pharaonic bust to Egypt.
