I found another interesting article from Smithsonian magazine relating to Mali's threatened heritage  that can be read here. In this article Joshua Hammer goes into detail about how the demand for West African artefacts has lead many of it's antiques to being smuggled out the country illegally and the production of non-authentic objects has soared. It seems that while Western art dealers and collectors are buying and selling genuine objects for millions, the African dealers are playing them at their own game by circulating non-authentic objects. Today it is hard to judge which artefacts were produced using traditional methods hundreds of years ago and which ones were produced in the back streets of Ghana just yesterday.