20 new World Heritage Sites added in 2010 and not one was in Africa. Ok, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, first listed in 1978 as a natural property was
re-listed in 2010 as a mixed property, recognising its cultural significance - one of 7 extensions made by the
34th session of the World Heritage Committee. With apologies to Tanzania, let me be the first to say woo-frickin'-hoo.
If the
irrigation scheme for mining in Goslar, Germany can get some love from the UNESCO committee, why are African sites absent?
My guess is that lack of resources (money) and capacity (i.e., people with the understanding, skills, time and prioritisation) are keeping potential African sites from being submitted to UNESCO for consideration. It takes a long time and a lot of planning to get a World Heritage Site proposal together just on
technical criteria alone, aside from the
actual importance of the site in terms of world heritage. I don't believe that the criteria are too steep or that the UNESCO committee have an anti-African slant. But ZERO new sites among the 54 nations? Something is wrong.
This lack of African sites plays out in pernicious ways...fewer sites of world heritage make Africa seem less important than other places around the world, less significant in its contributions to the world and in its value. This is picked up by Africans as well as others, contributing to a sense of disempowerment. It is the kind of insidious effect that continues to be felt by Africa and Africans, and is too often scoffed at by others who feel that Africans must have a chip on their shoulder or are playing the victim card or are just looking for more donor funding. I don't know what the solution is in the case of UNESCO WHS sites, but surely some clever NGOs and development academics have mulled this one over? This is an area in which Africa should be a leader, with a surfeit of sites compared to its percentage of global population and land area.
Well, here's the info on Ngorongoro in any case...nice to see the inextricably interconnected relationship between nature and culture in Africa getting a bit more affirmation - uh, no wait, it was added "because of the extraordinary record of human evolution at the site, which spans a vast area of land from the Serengeti National Park in the north-west of Tanzania to the eastern arm of the Great Rift Valley." So it's cultural relevance from millions of years ago, not local or traditional cultures. Harumph.
From UNESCO:
"Archaeological research in the area has also yielded a long sequence of evidence of human evolution and human-environment dynamics, collectively spanning almost four million years to the early modern era. This evidence includes the fossilized footprints at Laetoli, associated with the development of the human ability to walk upright; a sequence of diverse, evolving hominim species from Australopiths to Homo erectus and Homo sapiens; and remains that document the development of stone technology and the transition to the use of iron.
The Ngorongoro Conservation Area also contains the spectacular Ngorongoro Crater, which is the world's largest caldera, and the Olduvai Gorge, one of the world's most important pre-historic sites, where anthropologists Louis and Mary Leakey made many of their greatest discoveries. The area has global importance for biodiversity conservation and was first inscribed on the World Heritage List as a natural site in 1979."
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New African World Heritage sites in
2009: 2
New African World Heritage sites in
2008: 2
New African World Heritage sites in
2007: 4
[images: UNESCO/OUR PLACE The World Heritage Collection]
Africa's new UNESCO World Heritage Sites for 2010
