African Heritage Challenges Communities and Sustainable Development

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 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 Archaeology, University of Pretoria

“An excellent analysis of the unprecedented complexity surrounding the management of African heritage today. Emerging and evolving contestations regarding ownership, methods and rights as well as prospects of development and environmental schemes are some of the issues richly illuminated by leading scholarship. The book provides invaluable new insights for rethinking our approaches locally.”

—Dr. Sada Mire, Archaeologist and author of Divine Fertility (2020)

The richness of Africa’s heritage at times stands in stark contrast to the economic, health, political, and societal challenges that the continent faces across variegated contexts. Development is essential but in what forms? For whom? Following whose agendas? At what costs? This book, with a special focus on sub-Saharan Africa, explores how heritage can promote, secure, or undermine sustainable development, and in turn, how this affects conceptions of heritage. The chapters 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. By critically analysing the often romanticised discourses of ‘heritage’, ‘community engagement’, and ‘sustainable development’ it suggests ways of harnessing aspects of heritage to tackle some of the socioeconomic and political pressures facing heritage practices on the continent, including the legacies of colonialism.

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.