Cambridge University collections hold 350,000 African artefacts

An estimated 350,000 African artefacts, from human remains and photographs to natural history specimens and manuscripts, have been found in a university’s collections.

Dr Eva Namusoke spent 15 months liaising with University of Cambridge librarians, curators and archivists, as well as delving into their stores, to uncover the items.

It “is fairly common” for large museums not to display most of their collections, but it was “still surprising to see this scale and diversity from the entire African continent and some there for decades and decades”, she said.

The project is the latest in recent work at the university to tackle questions about its museums’ relationship with colonisation and enslavement and reveals the majority of artefacts were acquired during British colonisation.