Full Description
Despite decades of efforts to create a more representative World Heritage List, African cultural heritage remains significantly underrepresented, accounting for less than 9% of inscribed cultural properties. This imbalance reflects a deeper conceptual challenge: prevailing heritage frameworks continue to privilege material permanence and monument-centred values, while many African heritage systems are grounded in living traditions, spirituality, community custodianship, and continuity of practice. In these contexts, heritage is sustained through evolving relationships between people, place, memory, belief, and the natural environment.
Building on the landmark "The Nairobi Outcome on Heritage and Authenticity" (2025), this volume brings together leading scholars, practitioners, policymakers, and community representatives to articulate African perspectives on heritage. Through critical analyses and case studies from across the continent, it advances the decolonisation of heritage governance and promotes more inclusive approaches to heritage recognition and management. In doing so, it offers a pathway for historically underrepresented perspectives, including Indigenous peoples, minority communities, and other marginalised groups worldwide, to play a more active role in shaping international heritage discourse.
