Diaspora organisation ends partnership with Africa Museum

Fémïya, a non-profit organisation representing the African diaspora, is ending its collaboration with the Africa Museum in Tervuren.

The group organised guided decolonisation walks at the museum from a feminist, ecological and anti-racist perspective, Bruzz reports, but has now decided to stop.

“We do not want to be the Africa Museum's 'token' or black moral guarantor,” the organisation said.

The final straw was the visit of science minister Vanessa Matz (Les Engagés), which the non-profit organisation said it had not been informed about.

“Because we were not informed of the programme for this visit, we fear that the minister was not properly made aware of the internal and ethical problems facing this post-colonial museum,” the organisation wrote.

Earlier this year, political scientist Nadia Nsayi wrote an open letter in which she criticised the museum's "weak leadership" and "absurd vision".

But according to Fémïya, some three months later, nothing has changed.

The "renewed" Africa Museum has been receiving less support from the African and Congolese diaspora of late, with the letter being just one recent example.

Fémïya was aiming to organise a formal meeting on the subject, but it said that the museum never responded.

“Because our agreement expires this month, and the Africa Museum has not taken a position since Nadia Nsayi's column and we have not received a clear answer about the museum's participation in the meeting, it seems better to us to suspend our collaboration,” Fémïya said.

"As the only diaspora association with a medium-term agreement with the Africa Museum, we fear that our partnership will continue to be used to refute critical analyses of the museum."