27th June, 2018
The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation UNESCO, has reiterated the need to document cultural heritage in Africa, for prosperity.
Dr Fackson Banda, its Programme Specialist, Memories of the World (MoW), told the newsmen that such heritage has the potentials to be inscribed on the national, regional or the international MoW.
Banda spoke on the side line of a workshop, themed, “Documentary Heritage for Sustainable Development in Africa,” in Abuja.
” If we don’t have sufficient knowledge of the documentary heritage that exists it simply means that we do not know who we are.
” And we lose a sense of shared identity and this is important in other to promote development,” he said.
He explained that representatives from 27 African countries were in Abuja to proffer ways of documenting their local heritages for posterity, intellectual purposes and sustainable development.
Banda said the workshop was an opportunity for the participants to consult on the implementation of the 2015 UNESCO recommendation concerning the preservation, providing access to documentary heritage including in digital form.
” We have gathered 27 African countries to learn about documentary heritage which is at risk and in so doing raise awareness about the necessity for such preservation.”
According to him, the report from the workshop would be reported during the general conference, expected to hold in 2019 at UNESCO headquarters.
” The 194 countries that are members of UNESCO, come together to make decisions concerning the organisation.
“In that meeting, member states will discuss on what they have done to implement the 2015 recommendation and it starts now on how to report on this normative instrument so they can give good reports.”
There were exhibitions of African portraits, historical pictures, artefacts, and books by various government parastatal agencies as part of the three-day event.