Nigerian novelist Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani writes about a new initiative to reclaim artwork looted from Africa by colonial powers.

ABUJA — What if Africans somehow managed to access museums across the Western world, gather all the artwork looted from their territories during the colonial era, and take them back home?

A young Nigerian man is attempting to do just that. But rather than physically breaking into museums and carting away the works of art, he wants to repatriate them digitally.

"This is the first digital repatriation of stolen artwork," said 34-year-old Chidi, a Nigerian creative designer and founder of Looty, who declined to give his surname because, he said, he wants people to focus on his project and not his person.

"I had this idea that: Why don't we take back the physical works of art into the digital world?"

The idea of Looty first came to him following the growing conversations around non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which claim to provide public proof of the ownership of digital files.

While the legal rights conveyed by NFTs can be uncertain, they are becoming increasingly popular.

The NFT of the first tweet by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey sold for $3m (£2.4m), and another of the arrest warrant for South Africa's late anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela raised $130,000 at an auction.

The NFT conversations are happening at the same time that there is increased agitation for the return of artwork stolen from Africa by European colonizers.

"We were talking about provenance and ownership of the pieces. What if I was able to take them back and turn them into NFTs?" Chidi said.

The process of repatriating the artwork starts with researching potential pieces for Looty, then going to museums to scan them using special apps on mobile phones.

Afterward, the images are downloaded on to laptops and the complicated process of converting them to 3D begins, using special apps and technology.

"To be honest, it is almost like we are re-sculpting the artwork again," Chidi said. "One piece can take like a whole week to finish, maybe more."

The Looty website will be formally launched on 13 May, but the work began in November 2021.

While Chidi is the founder, he works with two other Nigerians and a Somali.

Each member of the team specializes in 3D design, NFT technology or editing, but they have all visited museums in the UK and France to capture images of the artwork with their mobile phones.

So far, they have managed to create about 25 different pieces, including some of the famous Benin Bronzes that once decorated the royal palace of the kingdom of Benin in what is today Nigeria, and have their sights set on many more. — BBC