Valorisation of marginilised heritage sites in East Africa

The French Institute of Research in Africa organized in Nairobi on January 17-18th a regional workshop on the “Second circle of the heritage in East Africa, valorization and heritagisation of the secondary sites” which gathered academics and carriers of projects, coming from and concerning Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi, patricians and professionals of the heritage sector, national and international institutions, research organization as the IRD.

The objective of the meeting was to define a program of applied research about heritage sites which do not appear in the circle of the certified and universal heritage sites, but which are in a critical situation, degraded, unattractive, ignored… The objective of this program is to participate in the valorization of these sites under several forms (scientific valorization and inventory, territorial diagnosis, protection program, communication and heritage marketing) and to understand the challenges and the difficulties of the heritagisation and memorialisation of the “second circle”, which are “commemorative sites”, sensitive and memory places or spaces, land stakes..

This research will participate in the training of the national teams and will contribute to the thought about a regional labelling of these “second circle” sites. The meeting identified three domains, through about twenty presented sites (historical, cultural, architectural, cultural landscaped and natural heritages) :

• the historic and archaeological sites ;
• urban building heritage and architecture from the 1920s to the Independences; 
• protected areas.

The expected method is dual : researches in situ within the framework of current operations (protection and inventory, communication, management) and confrontations on transversal themes around the challenge of a heritagisation. Associating teams of the North and the South, professionals and academics, the program wishes to support individuals and collective projects involved in the valorization of the three domains have been identified.

Source: France in Kenya website

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