Last week, over 2,200 looted artefacts, many from ancient Egypt, were seized as part of a Europe-wide crackdown, Europol announced Wednesday.

Among the most valuable of the recovered cultural items was a majestic bust of the Egyptian goddess Sekhmet worth an estimated $113,000, said Spanish police Captain Javier Morales, who news agency AFP said is an expert in historic objects.

I condemn thieves of all stripes, but hesitate when it comes to art. Yes, the people who create it — the Egyptians, the Mijikenda people at the Kenya Coast who make the prized wooden memorial statues known as vigango — should be the ones getting the money from the work.

But there is something about artefacts, and art in general, where the thieves sometimes serve a good purpose.

Art is not bread or wine that the thief will eat or drink and that is the end of it. Art hangs around for generations. There is a case for the artefacts looted from Africa to be returned to the continent, but it would be useless if they are returned and kept in a store where they will be eaten by moths.

So the most important thing with art is that it should be available for the citizens of the world to enjoy. A thief who steals a wonderful piece of art from a remote village in Mwanza, Tanzania, and it ends up in an exhibition in Nairobi or London, is still a thief, but a noble one.

Years ago, I was walking in a Nairobi market with a friend who understands these things, and he pointed out some unique carvings with a wonderful patina that he said had been stolen by rebels from a village in Kisangani, eastern DR Congo, during the height of the war there.

And, through the elaborate trucking network in the region, had found their way to Nairobi.

From Nairobi, a few would end up in the West, some in Asia in private museums.

Without a rebel with an eye for art, and a crooked trucker, and traffickers, that art would have died in the DRC bush, its majesty unknown to the world.

It is like a delinquent son who finds a wonderful manuscript by his writer father that he locked away in the family attic 20 years ago, and steals and sells it for a few shillings to buy beer.

For enabling the world to read the genius of the work, the gods of literature would probably not judge him too harshly.

The focus of art reparations therefore should be on sharing the proceeds from its exhibition, not domiciling it back in the native land of those who created it.

If a piece of art stolen from somewhere in East Africa, say, turns up at an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary African Art at Tate Modern and is seen by 750,000 people a year, should it be returned to the region where only 50 will see it, and risk a drunk watchman making a fire with it on a chilly Nairobi night?

I say no. Art is not a lost child in the park who needs to be returned to its parents. Even perfect strangers will give it a home — as long as its creator is acknowledged and given pride of place.

Charles Onyango-Obbo is editor of Mail & Guardian Africa (mgafrica.com) Twitter: @cobbo3