In 1972, One Hundred and Ninety Three countries signed an historic United Nations agreement on world heritage sites. The Agreement gave the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) the mandate to preserve places across the globe that are revered for their “outstanding universal value.”
Examples in Africa are: Table Mountain in South Africa, Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe / Zambia, The Okavango Delta in Botswana, The Pyramids in Egypt, the Mount Kenya National Park in Kenya, Simien National Park in Ethiopia amongst 108 others. Of the 108 sites in Africa, 42 are Natural, 61 are Cultural and 5 are mixed.
There is no doubt that having a site included on the list, provides immense publicity and media coverage with the resulting increase in tourism. It also comes with financial, scientific, educational and cultural assistance given to the home country, to assist in efforts to conserve their World Heritage sites.
UNESCO has added 24 new sites to the World Heritage List, in 2024, bringing the total number of world heritage sites to 1,223 in total.
There is an apparent bias to the allocation of these sites and the uneven allocation of a disproportionate amount to the Northern America and European regions. These two regions combined have a total of 573 sites compared to only 108 in Africa and 150 in Latin America and the Caribbean region.
Source: Statista – https://www.statista.com/chart/30943/share-of-cultural-mixed-natural-world-heritage-sites-per-region/
UNESCO says it is introducing new measures such as trying to “improve the number of African heritage sites on the World Heritage List, through providing better support for African states carrying out local conservation projects and preparing World Heritage nomination files.”
It is also incumbent on African Leaders and governments to actively drive for more allocation of African heritage sites and the resources to maintain these. The potential to drive additional economic growth and bring more attention to what the continent offers is important and should be a permanent fixture on their agendas.