African Collections

The Museum’s African collections, most of which come from the former Museum of Africa, are the result of various expeditions to Spain's colonial territories in Africa during the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century (Morocco, Western Sahara and Equatorial Guinea).

Recent donations and acquisitions have sought to broaden its scope across the vast and varied geography of Africa, offering a glimpse of the cultural complexity of this diverse continent. These include donations such as the collection of objects from Ethiopia, which focus particularly on its religious singularity, as well as the set of objects collected between 1961 and 1964 during the archaeological campaigns in the south of Egypt of the 'Spanish Committee for the Recovery of the Treasures of Nubia', donated by Martín Almagro Basch.

The Museum's African collections are divided into two main geographical areas.

The first corresponds to the Maghreb area in northern Africa, a region where the establishment of Islam has had a strong influence on its cultural development. As much is evident in the significant collections from Morocco and Western Sahara. Special mention should be made of the collections of Moroccan jewellery and ceramics, both Berber and Arab, where the technical and stylistic innovations brought by Arab culture are clearly visible.

For the regions south of the Sahara, the majority of our collections come from cultural areas around the Gulf of Guinea. Of particular note are the Bubi collections from the island of Bioko (formerly Fernando Poo) and the very large collection from the Fang culture (on the Equatorial Guinea mainland), which includes a collection of Byeri figures, samples of masks and other ritual objects, as well as collections that help to understand the daily life of these groups.

West Africa has a special place in the museum. This is the case, for example, of the Yoruba and their rich spiritual world. The museum has a wide range of objects from cultural groups such as the Vico, Bujeba, Balengue, etc, from the same geographical area.