The concept of the African Renaissance expresses the idea that the African continent is experiencing a crucial phase of its history and will overcome the current challenges of poverty, inequality, and violence to achieve cultural, political, and economic renewal and a more just and equitable order. First articulated by the Senegalese historian Cheikh Anta Diop (1923–1986) in the aftermath of World War II, the concept encourages African peoples to take pride in their rich cultural heritage and long history, to take charge of their lives and rebuild the economy, and to set Africa as a significant player in international affairs. For the African Union, the continent should take advantage of and build on its rich diversity of cultures in its quest for prosperity.

The safeguarding of African heritage and diversity can benefit local communities, promoting intercultural dialogue and peace as well as sustainable development. This article thus aims to spark conversation about Africa’s heritage and identify some methods to realize the African Renaissance. First, it discusses the legacies of colonialism. Second, it explores the promise of cultural decolonization. Third, it scrutinizes the concept of the African Renaissance, its historical roots, and its current legal significance. Fourth, it investigates the linkage between the African Renaissance and sustainable development. Fifth, it focuses on how the World Heritage Convention protects African sites of cultural and natural outstanding value and whether such protection is adequate or could be improved. Finally, it offers some preliminary conclusions.

Legal, ethical, historical, cultural, and political questions in relation to African cultural heritage are increasingly the focal point of international, regional, and national debates. It is now widely recognized that African cultural disputes – often between African States (or State institutions) on the one hand, and Western States, State institutions and private actors on the other – are ripe for settlement, especially on the basis of law, including international law. This article focuses on international arbitration as a means for resolving African cultural heritage-related disputes and, for the first time analyses the benefits of all types of international arbitration (State-to-State arbitration, investment treaty arbitration and commercial (contract-based) arbitration) from the perspective of African States and actors in relation to the resolution of African cultural heritage disputes, which include disputes regarding the return of African cultural objects. This article examines for the first time the potential role of all types of arbitral proceedings ((i) State-to-State arbitration, (ii) international investment treaty arbitration (or, as often-called, Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS)), and (iii) commercial arbitration) for the resolution of Africa-related cultural heritage disputes.

Shipwrecks are archaeological, economic, historical, and political time capsules waiting to be unlocked. Their discovery results in debates over matters relating to their protection including ownership, jurisdiction, and the manner of their preservation. Interested parties include flag States, particularly in case of sunken State vessels, States in the maritime zone of which the wrecks are found, private owners of items submerged with the wrecks as well as other States linked to the objects. Sunken State vessels involve the additional disputing issue of sovereign immunity. Africa has thousands of historic shipwrecks lying around its coasts. This article examines, in the context of the African Renaissance, laws from 22 select African States in protecting underwater cultural heritage, particularly sunken (State) vessels, in light of relevant international treaties particularly the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and the UNESCO Convention on the Protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage.

This essay makes the case that law in most of Africa has, since colonial times, been used as a framework of domination and imperialism. This has always been through repugnancy/supremacy clauses, which were predicated on the highly problematic assumption that European ways of knowing were superior to the African ones. This essay also demonstrates that, sadly, these clauses are still on the statute books of many African countries and continue to haunt the protection through law of Africa’s precious and unique tangible and intangible cultural heritage. The essay also shows that another way through whichthe development of African heritage was arrested through law was by criminalizing traditional Indigenous practices, which European imperial powers did not fully understand in terms of ontology. It is also argued that the same problems bedeviling the legal protection of African cultural heritage at the domestic level haunt this protection, even at the regional level(s). African regional courts continue to sadly apply alien notions of law to the exclusion of majority Africans. International law, being state-centric, has not been applied in the African context to revolutionarily protect African heritage. Where it has done so, it has been failed by the states or has been generally limited by its problematic colonial foundations. Finally, it is agued that African states need to de-elitesize, de-Westernize and decolonize the law if it is to effectively protect cultural heritage and property and make meaning to the ordinary African. This is urgent and imperative from a cultural, security and geopolitical vantagepoint.

This article aims to explain the strains and paradoxes of how African communities have been unable to obtain legal access and control to expropriated or stolen cultural heritage held in foreign museums despite their increased participation in international cultural heritage law. Further, it outlines the strained relationship between communities’ participation in cultural heritage governance under international cultural heritage law and cultural heritage law in Kenya. Using a postcolonial critique, this article examines these cultural heritage laws using notions of communitarianism and relationality in relation to the African Renaissance. It is demonstrated that communities should have increased participation in cultural heritage governance and, as a result, access to and control over their appropriated cultural heritage held in foreign museums. The purpose of a post-colonial critique of cultural heritage laws seeks to allow states and communities to listen to each other as opposed to one replacing the other in matters of cultural heritage.