France's parliament Monday approved returning to Ivory Coast a "talking drum" that colonial troops took from the Ebrie tribe in 1916, in the latest greenlight to the repatriation of colonial spoils.
The Djidji Ayokwe drum is a communication tool more than three metres long and weighing 430 kilos that was once used to transmit messages between different areas, for example to warn others of a forced recruitment drive. The lower house of the French parliament approved separating out the artefact from national museum collections to enable its return, after the upper-house Senate backed the move in April.
In 2018, Ivory Coast officially asked Paris to return 148 works of art taken during the colonial period, including the Djidji Ayokwe. President Emmanuel Macron promised to send the drum and other artefacts back home to the West African country in 2021.