After months of collaboration, travel, co-design, and real-world testing, SummitShare’s first report is out.It marks the culmination of a unique pilot: connecting digital exhibitions with direct, revenue sharing to the communities whose heritage forms the heart of the exhibit. From idea to implementation, this has been a journey of listening, learning, and co-creating with institutions and communities alike. We’re proud to announce that the first stage of the revenue distribution is now complete pilot—funds raised through ticket sales to The Leading Ladies of Zambia exhibit are in the process of being disbursed. These funds will support development proposals created by the communities themselves. It’s a small step, but a powerful one. A seed has been sown. The Report Our newly released report,Repatriation in Practice: A Field Report on Community Linked Digital Exhibits in Zambia,offers a high-level retrospective of this pilot. It walks through:

SummitShare launched The Leading Ladies of Zambia, a digital exhibit showcasing six historic Zambian women, blending heritage and technology. On the 13th of December 2024, The Leading Ladies of Zambia went live to the public. This groundbreaking showcase features six carefully curated, provenance-rich artifacts currently housed in Swedish museums. These artifacts tell the stories of era-defining women in Zambian history. This launch marks a transformative step in reclaiming cultural heritage, fostering historical awareness, worldwide reach, and tangible benefits for heritage communities through a digital platform that brings these precious pieces of Zambian heritage closer to home. To mark this monumental event, a physical exhibit was held in Lusaka, Zambia. This event not only introduced the platform to new users in real-time but also celebrated accessible heritage and marked a milestone for the SummitShare team. group Bringing History to Life The launch event, an intimate gathering attended by 30 engaged guests, celebrated a significant milestone after over two years of development—a journey marked by challenges and achievements. The exhibit functioned as more than just a display; it was also a retrospective, capturing SummitShare's growth story. This journey included building meaningful connections with heritage communities, fostering dialogues with institutions and government bodies, platform development, and research.

SummitShare is a digital heritage initiative founded by Mulenga Kapwepwe, Thomas Gondwe, Nhyira Amofa-Sekyi, and Mario Jere. It uses blockchain technology to preserve cultural artifacts and reconnect them with their origins. The platform’s Leading Ladies exhibit celebrates six trailblazing Zambian women, offering 3D artifact models linked to their historical contexts. Mulenga Kapwepwe, founder of the Women’s History Museum of Zambia posed a question in 2022 to a small group of younger tech enthusiasts in Zambia: Can something called “blockchain technology” offer any new usefulness for the preservation of history? She had started a new initiative aimed at digital humanities, and engaging with young people excited by technology who might want to apply their talents to the world of arts, culture, and history. The group of developers, designers, and artists she was working with shared their enthusiasm for “web3”, and together they discussed some of the properties and features of blockchains. So she began to consider how they might apply it to a truly challenging problem for African Heritage: artifact repatriation. Historically, many regions around the world have seen their material cultural heritage housed in European and American museums, raising complex questions about ownership, history, and identity. In the African context, this issue is particularly pronounced: an estimated 90% of Africa's material cultural heritage is now located in the West, according to the 2018 Sarr and Savoy report The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage: Toward a New Relational Ethics[^1]. While discussions around physical repatriation have persisted for years, geopolitical and logistical complexities often make tangible steps toward resolution difficult. The group had an idea: if the physical repatriation of artifacts is too bound up in geopolitical, cultural and logistical challenges, perhaps it would be possible to create a digital cast of the artifacts as a viable alternative. By linking a digital artifact to its physical original, this method might capture and evoke a similar connection to heritage, creativity, history, and the invaluable knowledge and lessons of the past that museum patrons experience in person, while also offering a new perspective on the physical artifacts—forming innovative ways to connect with cultural heritage. With the right supporting technology, African artifacts currently locked away in European and American museums could become accessible to Africans whose ancestors took part in creating them. Virtual and augmented reality technology has advanced enough to enable high-fidelity scans of physical objects, allowing them to be displayed on screens, projectors, or VR goggles in a museum exhibition. However, the scanned objects still need that essential property of uniqueness in order to have a meaningful sense of provenance connected to the real thing. If artifacts housed in distant museums could be scanned, minted, and exhibited as unique, provenance-verified digital items, researchers, curators, and museum patrons could engage with the artifacts in new ways. Moreover, social coordination around these digital artifacts could enable meaningful interactions, allowing communities and experts to collectively manage, share, and research cultural heritage in new ways.

A vehicle for collaboration in digital repatriation and preservation of African culture The Problem Why does the issue of repatriation exist? It’s a pertinent question. Why do individuals, who have had minimal interactions with objects, fervently desire their return from places far from their origins? Part of the answer lies in the objects being “held in a place other than where they are from,” as the question suggests. The second part of the answer lies in symbolism, pivotal to Africa, its myriad countries, and their varied practices. Symbols, be they statues, currency, buildings, or shrines, hold intrinsic value globally, attributed by people either due to utility or in commemoration of such utility. Returning to the African context, addressing the repatriation challenge requires two key actions. First, a universal comprehension of repatriation’s fundamentals is necessary: understanding the process, its significance, and why governments, organizations, and individuals should invest resources, time, effort, and money into this endeavour. Essentially, common definitions and historical insights into repatriation are needed. Repatriation narrates a tale of slavery from the perspective of a now-liberated people (though finding the correct, time-sensitive term is challenging). It occurs when items displaced from their rightful home are demanded back by the people to whom they belong. “Displaced” is somewhat misleading, as these artifacts were taken—some legitimately, others pillaged, with the rest lost to history. And in their place a symbol was created. This historical appropriation has forged a symbol encapsulating longing, hurt, pain, vindictiveness, and curiosity. The persistence of artifacts in foreign lands symbolizes an ongoing legacy of slavery, a harsh reality that, though symbolic, can also be seen as an undeniable truth.

SummitShare values transparency in managing donations, ensuring community and project support via secure blockchain transactions. Introduction SummitShare values transparency, accountability, and community engagement in all its financial transactions. This policy provides detailed guidelines on how donations are received, managed, and allocated to maximize impact and maintain donor trust. Donation Types and Allocation Project Donations:Purpose: Funds are dedicated to the technological development, research initiatives, and operational scaling of SummitShare projects. Management: Donations are deposited into an escrow wallet. Once funds are received, 40% is allocated to the project to facilitate research, operations, infrastructure development, and the establishment of relationships with heritage communities. This also includes monitoring and evaluation reports, which donors can opt into through our newsletter. Transparency: Donors are added to a special stakeholder mailing list, receiving regular updates on how funds are spent and the progress of projects supported by their contributions.

With the release of the SummitShare website, we are a step closer in the right direction. After much research and iterations, we are going live. But this is just one step to mark the commencement of another one. We are now preparing to have an exhibit, which will serve as the demo and application of our technology. What is an Exhibit on SummitShare? An exhibit on SummitShare is multifaceted in nature. With the traditional definition, we are going to have an exhibit of art, but in this case, more specifically artifacts that were used. These exhibits are not just displays but are integral parts of a broader mission to restore cultural heritage and provide economic restitution. Our exhibits are managed and deployed by our smart contracts and their services, which allow us to do everything from tokenizing artifacts to fund distribution and payments for tickets. Each exhibit is linked to a heritage community, and the core purpose of fund distribution is to enable value addition to these communities by funding SDGs or community-voted development goals. Deployment and Data Collection The first step post-deployment of the SummitShare application involves data collection and engaging with the Gwembe Valley community. This community is associated with the Leading Ladies exhibit. Our objective is to set up wallets and gather essential data to assess the community's needs and integrate their governance and voting processes into our platform.