Less than 9% of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites are in Africa. Experts say the award is too Eurocentric. But also in Africa there is a lack of structures and the political will to preserve the cultural and natural heritage.
This year eight mosques in northern Ivory Coast and the Ivindo National Park in Gabon have landed one of the coveted places on the UNESCO list of world cultural heritage. In addition to the two sites in Africa, at its 44th meeting in the Chinese port city of Fuzhou, the responsible body named 16 candidates from Europe and a further 16 from other regions of the world as new World Heritage Sites.
The geographical imbalance in the award of titles by UNESCO is not new. Almost half of the 1,154 UNESCO World Heritage Sites are in Europe, less than 100 in Africa. The Kenyan George Abungu has a simple explanation for this: “The process is too Eurocentric.”
UNESCO Convention too Eurocentric
George Abungu is an archaeologist who served as director of the National Museum in Kenya. He has a clear view of the work of UNESCO – the United Nations Organization for Education, Science, Culture and Communication – and refers to the founding year 1972, when “mainly white men” brought the convention into being.
“Of course it’s Eurocentric, and from a Western perspective, African countries have to prove the extraordinary value of their sites to humanity in order to make it onto the list,” Abungu told DW.
Christoph Brumann from the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle sees it similarly: “At first, the world heritage was more or less implicitly thought of as Europe’s elitist and monumental heritage. The focus was on cathedrals, palaces, temples, historic old towns, ”Brumann said in an interview with DW.
Lack of experience and finance for job applications
This was criticized about 30 years ago, said Brumann, which then led to reforms. Today, shared heritage and cultural landscapes, where human-environment interaction is particularly interesting, could make it onto the official list. That could help African nominations. But the problem, according to Brumann and Abungu, is “that there are too few applications from African countries”.
This is also due to the complicated application requirements: For an application, dossiers with hundreds and thousands of pages have to be created. “For countries with better know-how, more experience with monument and nature conservation and more money, this is simply much easier to achieve than for many African countries,” says Brumann.
UNESCO wants to do more for Africa
Mechtild Rössler also admitted that capacities are indeed small. Since 2015 she has been director of the UNESCO World Heritage Center in Paris. “Nevertheless, we have made progress,” emphasized Rössler. UNESCO supports African countries with donations from the “African World Heritage Fund”.
Intensive discussions at the summit, however, indicated a need for further action, said Rössler: “We see that we have to do a lot more in certain regions in order to prepare solid nominations and to strengthen capacity building with regard to nature conservation, local management.” And risk prevention, because many world heritage sites are endangered – that is a huge task. “
Spread the responsibility across many shoulders
According to Rössler, the universities should play a more important role in this and, in particular, should become more involved in the protection of cultural heritage. Your experts could help put together studies and documents for a country’s application. But governments also have a duty, she added.
The Kenyan archaeologist Abungu also criticized the fact that the universities have been reluctant for a long time, but that many of them are also struggling to survive. The African World Heritage Fund has to serve 54 countries with scarce resources, he said, and that is not possible. The strategy of UNESCO to create more balance in nominations worldwide has failed.
Economic interests have priority
Governments in Africa face other problems: they need to stimulate the economy, buy vaccines and create jobs for people. “The main reason why African governments have not been pushing for their territories to be listed lately is the fear that they will no longer be able to carry out development projects afterwards,” Abungu explains in an interview with DW.
National parks, for example: in the colonial times, communities were displaced there and now want their land back, but there are often valuable minerals or other resources there. In the Tanzanian nature reserve and UNESCO World Heritage Site of Selous, for example, the construction of a mega-dam is planned despite fierce criticism.
In order to remain a natural heritage, the landscape would have to remain untouched. For similar reasons, many UNESCO World Heritage sites in Africa are considered endangered, said Abungu. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where, among other things, an armed conflict over raw materials is raging, locations have already been removed from the list.
Protecting our common heritage together
The much touted tourism sector also offers little incentive for states, municipalities or other investors to invest money and work in an application for the UNESCO award, explained Abungu. Tourism is far too underdeveloped in most areas for a UNESCO World Heritage Site to attract many visitors.
“African governments need to understand that the convention helps them preserve valuable sites,” Abungu said. But politicians have their own interests, they want to exploit resources, create jobs and generate profits. Therefore, the preservation of these sites is only possible with the help of the global north: “We should change the strategy, invest more from north to south in order to protect the common heritage of humanity.”
