African Heritage Challenges

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxi

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2. Heritage Challenges in Africa: Contestations and Expectations

   • Britt Baillie, Marie Louise Stig Sørensen

   Pages 1-43

3. Managing Africa’s Anthropocene Environment

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 45-45

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   2. Needle in a Haystack? Cultural Heritage Resources in Designated Nature Environments of Southern Africa

      • Susan O. Keitumetse

      Pages 47-62

   3. African Cultural Heritage and Economic Development: Dancing in the Forests of Time

      • Paul J. Lane

      Pages 63-102

   4. Heritage and/or Development—Which Way for Africa?

      • Webber Ndoro

      Pages 103-124

4. Communities and the Quotidian

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 125-125

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   2. Mega Developments in Africa: Lessons from the Meroe Dam

      • Shadia Taha

      Pages 127-155

   3. Heritage and Sustainability: Challenging the Archaic Approaches to Heritage Management in the South African Context

      • Ndukuyakhe Ndlovu

      Pages 157-180

   4. The Antimonies of Heritage: Tradition and the Work of Weaving in a Ghanaian Workshop

      • Niamh Jane Clifford Collard

      Pages 181-199

   5. Transformation as Development: Southern Africa Perspectives on Capacity Building and Heritage

      • Rachel King, Charles Arthur, Sam Challis

      Pages 201-231

5. African States and the Transnational Development Agenda

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 233-233

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   2. The Culture Bank in West Africa: Cultural Heritage and Sustainable Development

      • Mathilde Leloup

      Pages 235-264

   3. Exhibition Making as Aesthetic Justice: The Case of Memorial Production in Uganda

      • Kara Blackmore

      Pages 265-296

   4. Modern Nostalgias for Sovereignty and Security: Preserving Cultural Heritage for Development in Eritrea

      • Christoph Rausch

      Pages 297-329

   5. Epilogue: Whose Heritage, Whose Development?

      • Chris Boonzaaier

      Pages 331-343

6. Back Matter

   Pages 345-363

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The richness of Africa’s heritage at times stands in stark contrast to the economic, health, political and societal challenges faced. Development is essential but in what forms? For whom? Following whose agendas? At what costs? This book explores how heritage can promote, secure, or undermine sustainable development with special focus on sub-Saharan Africa, and in turn, how this affects conceptions of heritage. The chapters in this volume  identify shared challenges, good practices and failures, and use specific case studies to provide detailed insights into varied forms of heritage and heritage defining processes on the continent. By critically analysing the often romanticised discourses of ‘heritage’, ‘community engagement’, and ‘sustainable development’ the volume suggests ways of harnessing aspects of heritage to tackle some of the socio-economic and political pressures facing heritage practices on the continent, including the legacies of colonialism.

• African studies
• archaeology
• anthropology
• development studies
• heritage studies
• sustainability in Africa

“African Heritage Challenges: Communities and Sustainable Development presents cultural heritage on the African continent in a futuristic way, invoking critical issues of sustainability and development, which are core to the twenty-first century development agenda. Development trajectories globally are strongly buttressed by the convergence between the past and present, where heritage plays a vital role, and Africa, though unique, is no exception.” (Prof. Innocent Pikarayi, Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Pretoria, South Africa)

• Wits City Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, Braamfontein, South Africa

  Britt Baillie

• Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

  Marie Louise Stig Sørensen

Dr. Britt Baillie is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Wits City Institute, University of the Witwatersrand and a founding member of the Centre for Urban Conflict Research, University of Cambridge.

Prof. Marie Louise Stig Sørensen is Professor of European Prehistory and Heritage Studies at the Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, and the Director of the Cambridge Heritage Research Centre.

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