Benin artworks stolen by colonizers to be returned to Africa, France’s President Emmanuel Macron orders

France's President Emmanuel Macron has come to a decision to return 26 artworks to Benin without any delay. French art historian Bénédicte Savoy and Senegalese economist Felwine Sarr submitted the 108-page study based on the President's agreement on Friday in Paris. History says that Benin art was produced mainly for the court of the Oba of Benin.

Emmanuel Macron's order states that the various French museums need to return the pieces of African artifacts that were stolen or taken "without consent" during the colonial period. The report recommends full restitution not the long-term loan of such materials.

It is still not known at what extent Britain, Germany and France looted Africa during colonialism, but according to the report that was submitted on Friday, about 90 percent of Africa's cultural heritage presently lies outside the continent.

The report's authors traveled to Mali, Senegal, Cameroon and Benin and looked through the works held by the Musée du quai Branly, a museum focused on non-European cultures in Paris, and found that about 46,000 of its 90,000 African works were "acquired" between 1885 and 1960 and may have to be returned, as reported by The Guardian. The report further says that British troops annihilated much of the beautiful city of Benin in 1897, burned the royal palace and looted over 4,000 works of art including elegant brass heads and intricate plaques depicting war exploits, known as the Benin Bronzes.

The Governor of Easter Island in the Pacific Tarita Alarcón Rapu on Tuesday begged the British Museum with his eyes full of tears to return one of its famous statues. Stolen in 1868 by the crew of the British ship HMS Topaze, the huge 8 ft tall statue, Hoa Hakananai'a is now attracting several visitors' eyeballs every day at the British Museum in London. "We all came here, but we are just the body – England people have our soul," Rapu told the journalists.