We can display our culture and document at museums where our way of life is recorded, including our codes of manners, dress, language, religion, rituals, art and norms of behaviour.
Museums have the power to change the world for the better and play a crucial role in preserving our culture.
They are wonderful places to take children for both fun and education.
That is why there has been an increase in the number of museums globally.
The problem is that Africa has fewer museums than other continents.
The good news is that two museum projects are underway in the continent. They will be a unique addition to the cultural heritage of Africa.
These two museums are the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) and the Pan-African Heritage World Museum (PAHM).
The GEM is one of the largest in the World. It is built to reflect Egypt’s past from prehistory until the Greek and Roman Periods.
Designed to serve as a gateway through time, connecting a 5,000-year-old civilization with modern times, the GEM is built at a unique site, overlooking the Giza Plateau to connect modern Cairo with the Great Pyramids of Giza. Visitors are privileged to see the significant museum collection through an impressive 28-meter high glass façade.
The GEM covers an area of approximately 500,000 square meters. It is the largest in the world displaying the heritage of a single civilization.
The museum will contain over 100,000 artifacts, covering an area of 92,000 square meters.
The GEM is a cultural hub that will include a children’s museum as well as conservation, restoration, storage, research and museum education facilities.
It is designed to be an entertaining cultural and tourist destination, offering large areas available for investment, including a conference center, a modern cinema theater, restaurants, overlooking the Pyramids, food courts, cafeterias, retail and commercial areas, bookshops, traditional arts and crafts centers, a multifunctional building and gardens hosting year-round events and activities, overlooking the Giza Plateau.
The problem is that western scholars have worked a long time ago to dissociate Egypt from the rest of Africa.
Even today, Egypt and Africa are regularly separated from each other in the research departments of universities and museums around the world.
However, in 1974, Cheikh Anta Diop shocked and challenged historians by asserting the influence of ancient African civilizations in his groundbreaking book ‘The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality’.
He juxtaposes ancient Egyptian works with masterpieces from West and Central Africa. Among some the notable pairings is a sculpted fragment of an Egyptian queen’s face shown alongside a 16th-century ivory mask from Benin.
According to the website of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, there are 21 pairings of works from different African cultures and eras, revealing unexpected parallels and contrasts.
“Although there was no contact between their creators, the works share deep and under recognized histories,” the website says.
The other museum still under construction is the PAHM in Ghana.
The design of the museum is shaped as a Horn. The horn is synonymous with a trumpet, a musical instrument often used in religious ceremonies.
It will launch the first digital museum in the world on May 5, 2022. The event coincides with the UNESCO-declared African World Heritage Day which is an opportunity for people around the world, Africans in particular, to celebrate the continent’s unique cultural and natural heritage.
Also known as the Pan-African Heritage Museum, the PAHM is an international NGO-registered project inaugurated by Ghana’s President, Nana Akufo-Addo, to provide the environment to preserve and curate the unique history, arts, culture and indigenous knowledge of Africans and people of African descent.
Projected to be completed for commissioning in August 2023, the Museum’s promoters have created the digital version of the galleries for public viewing to start from May 5, 2022.
The launch event, being held in collaboration with UNESCO, will be beamed worldwide from the campus of the African University College of Communications, in Accra, Ghana. Speakers expected at the function include UNESCO Representative in Ghana, Mr. Diallo Abdourahamane, and Dr. Ibrahim Mohammed Awal, the minister of tourism, culture and creative arts.
Messages are expected from representatives of the African Union Commission, Diaspora African Forum, All-Africa Students Union, Young African Leaders Forum, and the Association of African American Museums.
“This is a unique moment for us,” says the museum’s founder and Executive Chairman, Kojo Yankah.
“We are making history, not just in presenting, for the first time, the history, culture arts and achievements of Africans and people of African descent in one museum. We are also breaking grounds in giving the world the first digital museum ahead of physical construction”.
Professor Molefi Kete Asante of Temple University and chairman of the Curatorial Board of the Pan African Heritage Museum, said: “We are proud of our African heritage. This is a great event for us.”
The event will be available on the Museum’s website: www.pahmuseum.org.
The fact is that museums can be amazing allies and collaborators with those who are still campaigning to make this world a better place.
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