'How can someone loan us ourselves?'.

Most of what the British Museum holds in its hallowed exhibition halls in Bloomsbury, central London, did not originate in Britain. That is, by now, a well-known fact. But the detail as to how the seven million objects got into the museum in the first place is still a grey issue. Felicity Heywood is just back from an exhibition in Kenya which is part of an attempt by the British Museum to make amends for its (former?) policy of not returning looted artefacts to its original owners.

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It is true that many items in the British Museum (BM) were brought to Britain by explorers, missionaries, colonisers, whatever we wish to call them, as booty from their travels, wars and expeditions. Today, after decades of resisting change, the BM is attempting to work more closely with the countries it represents through its collections, including those in Africa. And part of it is to create loan agreements with those countries.

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The Africa Project is a [pounds sterling]500,000 British government-funded initiative, matched, in kind, by the British Council. It was thought up by the BM, to work in partnership with the cultural institutions across the continent.

The first installment of the Project began in Kenya in March this year with 140 objects of East African origin being loaned to the National Museums of Kenya (NMK) for an exhibition charting the economic, spiritual, and artistic links between East Africans, past and present.

Kiprop Lagat, a curator at the NMK, was invited to the BM in 2005 to rummage through any part of the BM's collection he felt was relevant to his theme. It was the first time the BM had opened its doors to another country like this. And it was the first time an African had curated an exhibition with items from the BM.

"There are no locked rooms," said the BM at the time. Surely not? Had Lagat chosen the contested Ethiopian Maqdala treasures, locked away in the BM's vaults, would he have been allowed to take them out of Britain?

The result of Lagat's research is Hazina: Traditions, Trade and Transitions in Eastern Africa--an exhibition that opened in March in the newly-named and refurbished Nairobi Gallery (formerly the Old PC building) in the centre of the Kenyan capital. The exhibition runs until the last day of September 2006. After the six months, the objects return to Britain.

Hazina means treasures in Swahili. There are objects from Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Lamu, Zanzibar, Rwanda, Burundi, Mozambique, Somalia and Sudan. The artefacts date from the 17th century to the present day.

Lagat wanted visitors from the East African community to be surprised by the links they had in common on display at the exhibition. Machetes brought from Birmingham, England, were transformed by the Maasai into their own weapons. Brass brought into southern Sudan by trade was used for prestigious headgear. And sandals seen across East Africa came with migrants from India.

One of the opening pieces in the exhibition is a Kanga cloth from Zanzibar with the Swahili words, "you do not know anything", meant as a parody of those who think that they know about the culture of their regions. Overall, the Siwa, a ceremonial side-blown horn, made of ivory, from Lamu and Pate islands was the showpiece of the exhibition.

But Lorna Abungu, executive director of Africom (the International Council of African Museums) is not convinced that the exhibition makes plain to visitors the story of East African trade. "Walking through this exhibition, one hardly grasps any sense of the complexity of the history of the region. There is no indication or interpretation of, or information on the intricate relations that have characterised the cultural development of the people in the region."

She continues: "As visitors, we are unable to identify those objects that relate to trade as an economic activity. What was traded, in exchange for what? How does the stand-alone Siwa interpret the theme of traditions, trade and transitions on its own in a glass case--devoid of its historic and human context?"

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And this has been one of the major criticisms of the exhibition. That a European-style presentation of objects just does not work in an African context. How were the objects used? And strangely, the exhibition labels are only in English. There was a consensus among the visitors I spoke to that the interpretation should also have been in Swahili.

Idle Omar Farah, the director of the NMK, says he hopes the exhibition will "stir the younger generation of Kenyans to have a picture of how things were managed before we got influenced by the rest of the world".

And it has done that. One young Kenyan I spoke to in the gallery said he "wanted to learn more about the traditions of his people". There was excitement among the security guards outside the building, voicing their pride at seeing the objects and the memories it brings about periods in history they were taught at school.

A Somalian living in Nairobi thought the interpretation was incorrect in the "leadership section". He said the headrests from Somalia whose label read, "The extensive interlace patterning suggests Islamic influence", were pre-Islamic. Nevertheless, he was happy that they were on show.

But Idle Farah is under no illusion that the biggest talk around Hazina would be the ownership issue. Who do these objects belong to? And he expects demonstrations by the pro-return lobby outside the gallery. Almost every report on Hazina in Kenya's two national newspapers, the Daily Nation and The Standard, concentrated on this issue. Farah told me that at the first press launch in February, the minister of national heritage said words to the effect: "We view the cultural objects as of universal importance wherever they are kept. They should be accessible to everyone everywhere in the world." The Daily Nation ran a piece saying the minister was wrong not to pursue "our cultural objects". And that was to be the tone of subsequent articles.

There were also backlashes to any suggestion that the items could not be returned to East Africa because its environmental conditions were not up to scratch.

Artists' chatrooms were ablaze with comment and at times disgust at the situation. Perhaps Jimmy Ogonga, artist and projects director of African Colours, the Nairobi-based visual art news information and archive, asked the most important question: "How can someone loan us ourselves?"

Claude Ardouin, a Malian, is the new head of the British Museum's African Section. He said: "We need a shift from the passionate and sometimes uninformed debate to a role of partnership. [The uninformed debate] has done more harm than good. There is a lot of misinterpretation and misinformation. The objects in Hazina are not the result of any fight. These objects are not stolen."

But the BM has said that one result of Hazina is that they have learned more about the objects and how they were used. Perhaps there is also more to know about how these objects were acquired.

During my visit, the Kenyan people were preparing to receive back two Vigango (also called Kigango) or grave markers which had been looted from the country and found in the Illinois State Museum in the US. They were part of a 20-year organised theft, and there are believed to be hundreds of Vigango scattered around the US, most likely in private hands.

The drought that has taken hold in Kenya (mainly in the north but with knock-on effects for the rest of the country) has been explained by some groups as a sign of annoyance by the ancestors because of their missing grave markers. The origins of the Vigango are clear, but if there ever was a rock solid reason for the return of objects, spiritual significance must be it. Elizabeth Ouma of the NMK is unusual, not for her stance that the Hazina objects should remain in the UK but for her reasons why. She says rather passionately: "Why should they stay? These objects were collected during the colonial era. They tell that story. They do not tell the story of African culture."

It is Ouma's job to devise an African museum concept and get away from the objects in a glass case model that has for so long been the norm within museums across Africa. The NMK's main building, which welcomes 300,000 visitors a year, is closed for a much-needed refurbishment, funded in part by EU money. It should reopen in 2008.

The next step for the British Museum in its quest for good international relations will allow the countries involved to keep the objects for years rather than months. Perhaps when the NMK gets its new building, this will be one of the conversations to take place.