Today (05/05/2023) marks African World Heritage Day, which was proclaimed at the 38th General Conference of UNESCO in 2015. It provides an opportunity to celebrate and to reflect upon Africa’s vibrant cultural and natural heritage, encouraging us to honour the Continent’s unique contribution to the world and to contemplate how we can ensure that heritage is preserved for future generations. This is a pressing task: although Africa is underrepresented on the World Heritage List, a high percentage of the African sites listed are on the World Heritage List in Danger.
As the Director of World Heritage, Lazare Eloundou Assomo, has highlighted, the concept of international co-operation for the safeguarding of national heritage was “born in Africa”.[1] Whilst thought had been given to such an initiative following the devastation that resulted from the First World War, it was the decision, taken in the mid-1950s, to build the Aswan High Dam in Egypt that led to UNESCO’s adoption of the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage in November 1972.[2] Construction of the dam would have flooded the Abu Simbel temples; significant relics of ancient Egyptian civilization.
The Abu Simbel temples in Egypt
In 1959 UNESCO launched an international safeguarding mission; the Abu Simbel and Philae temples were reassembled in appropriate locations; and the way was paved for the adoption of the World Heritage Convention. This remains (as UNESCO have put it) “the cornerstone of international cultural co-operation”.
British Online Archives would like to wish everyone a happy African World Heritage Day.
[1] See Mr Eloundou Assomo’s address on the occasion of African World Heritage Day 2022 at https://www.unesco.org/en/days/african-world-heritage.
[2] A history of the World Heritage Convention can be found at https://whc.unesco.org/en/convention/.