A team member of a recently launched project called "Looty" is conducting what they call a "digital art heist" at the British Museum.

According to Looty, it's perfectly legal to go to a museum and scan a target object using technology that can be used to create a 3D image.

The project's mission is to reclaim African artefacts stolen by European colonizers by creating 3D images of them, selling them as non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and using the proceeds to fund young African artists.

Calls for objects stolen during the colonial period to be returned to their places of origin have intensified in recent years, and some Western institutions have sent items back to countries including Nigeria and Benin.

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Chidi Nwaubani, the founder of Looty, described his project as an alternative form of repatriation, where digital technologies are used to reclaim a measure of control and ownership over artefacts still held far from Africa.

"We have you know, some of the most detailed artworks and for everyone, if you want to learn about those kind of artworks and sculpture you go to Nigeria, but we don't do that," Nwaubani said.

"If you want to learn about sculpture, you go to Britain or you go to another country in Europe, right? So, we are just trying to reimagine that world and bring that world into the digital."

The process begins with the digital art heist.

An NFT of the image is then created and put up for sale via the Looty website, which also acts as an online gallery where anyone can view the images for free.

Nwaubani said 20 percent of the proceeds of NFT sales would go into grants for African artists aged 25 or under.

The website launched on May 13, and while there were no immediate sales, Nwaubani said he had received messages of interest from around the world.

"There is this whole plan of this going into a museum in the metaverse and that is like the full scale of the process from end to end, so the first stage is the digital art heist and then the next stage is recreating these using digital software like 'Blender', and 'Cinema 3D Max'," said Nwaubani.

'The future is digital'

The Benin Bronzes are mostly held in European institutions such as the British Museum, and they are at the forefront of the debate over what should happen to loot from the colonial era.

Looty's first NFTs are based on an image of one of the Benin Bronzes that were looted by British troops in 1897 from what is now Nigeria and are held in the British Museum in London.

"The future is going to be a digital one and even though now the physical is definitely a lot more important, there is going to be a future where you know... and this was kind of the genesis of this project was that we wanted the digital to be on the same level as the physical," he said.

Looty's next big project is focused on an Ancient Egyptian item, Nwaubani said, declining to give further details.

The name Looty refers to the act of looting and is also a playful homage to the dog Looty, who was found by a British captain after British troops looted the Summer Palace near Beijing in 1860, taken to London and donated to Queen Victoria.