The ‘World Heritage Futures Lab: Southern and Eastern African edition’, which facilitates the development of digital content and products for better understanding of the contribution of World Heritage, started in Windhoek on Wednesday.

The event includes a three-day workshop to help creative technologists and local community members strengthen their capacities in interpreting World Heritage values. They will amongst others develop experimental digital content and products that could contribute to sustainable development and long-term peace in Southern and Eastern Africa.

It is being hosted by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture; the Namibia University of Science and Technology; the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property; the African World Heritage Fund; MTC Namibia; Electric South, and the International Centre for the Interpretation and Presentation of World Heritage Sites.

In his remarks at the event, Unesco Representative to Namibia Djaffar Moussa-Elkadhum stated that digital technologies and artificial intelligence are changing how people interact with, and experience, the world.

In the case of shared heritage, obtaining information about African World Heritage sites and easily monitoring or transmitting the practises and knowledge associated with their preservation is becoming more accessible, he said.

“As we have seen across the continent and globally, the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic in 2020-2021 has had and continues to have significant impacts on world heritage properties. It is time we change how we do business. The pandemic revealed the power of digital technology’s influence in our society,” he said.

In his remarks, Deputy Executive Director for Lifelong Learning in the Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture, Gerard Vries said the government committed to ratifying the Unesco Convention on the Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage in April 2000 as part of its efforts to promote sustainable development through World Heritage.

Vries stated that the government is committed to identifying, protecting, conserving, presenting, and transmitting cultural and natural heritage to future generations through the various policies put in place in conjunction with the ministry’s strategic plan to prioritise the safeguarding and promotion of World Heritage in the country.

“I am confident that the platform today will allow us to interpret the evidence of what we have been doing, identify what we can still do, and ultimately, resolve them,” he said.

Source: The Namibian Press Agency