In light of the wave of repatriation of colonial-era looted art back to Africa sweeping across Europe, the Republic of Benin received twenty-six artifacts and artworks returned by the French government on Wednesday.

The returned works of art comprised the doors of the Palace of Abomey, royal thrones, and warrior dance staff taken by French colonial soldiers in 1892. President Patrice Talon of Benin received them from the French government in Paris on Tuesday, before presiding over a ceremony to formally welcome the artworks back to Benin on Wednesday.

Guests at the formal welcoming ceremony included representatives of Benin’s royal families who are the descendants of the rightful custodians of the looted artifacts. The restituted artifacts will initially be housed in a museum in the city of Ouidah before being transferred to a new museum being built in Abomey, the site of the royal palaces of the Kingdom of Dahomey.

"This return is a testimony to what we have been, a testimony that we existed before, a testimony to what we have known," Talon said at the ceremony.

According to Reuters, the return of these twenty-six artworks is the largest France has made to a former colony, even at that, it is only a minuscule fraction of the 5,000 works of art in possession of the French of which Benin has been seeking for their return and the tens of thousands of seized works from African countries held in France.

Although France has returned several objects to former colonies in Africa and says it plans to continue to do so, advocates for restitution, of which President Talon is a leading voice, have said the process has been too slow and limited in scope.

About 90% of Africa's cultural heritage is now believed to be in Europe. The Quai Branly museum alone holds some 70,000 African objects. A 2018 report commissioned by the French government said around 46,000 of them should qualify for repatriation. That report, by Senegalese economist Felwine Sarr and French art historian Benedicte Savoy, recommended the full restitution of all objects taken by force or presumed to be acquired through inequitable conditions.

Some European countries, with Germany leading the front, have committed to returning some of the historically-tainted acquired artworks in their holdings to their countries of origin, plotting definite timelines for their restitution, while some African art objects that were held by two UK universities have been returned to Nigeria in the past week.