AFRICOM Handbook of Standards: Presentation of the project

This page is part of a handbook of documentation standards, developed by the International Council of Museums for use by museums in Africa. For an overview of the project, turn to the initial page.

The response to a request by museum professionals

Encounters entitled "What Museums for Africa? Heritage in the Future" were held in November 1991 in Benin, Ghana and Togo with nearly 12O museum and heritage professionals. The participants of the Accra workshop on "Conservation, repose and exchange of the heritage within and outside of Africa" and "Museums and Research" deliberated problems faced by African museums due to the lack of an effective methodology for inventorying collections.

Discussions on this subject led to the following workshop resolution which was approved by all the participants in the plenary sessions of the Encounters:

"After three days of work, the participants emphasized the importance of the critical situation of African museums. It was generally observed that the lack of inventories, temporary exhibitions, activities relating to research and collecting, as well as documenting have inhibited the development of most museums in Africa.(...) In addition to these shortcomings, the lack of communication amongst African museums was underscored.

In order to remedy this situation, workshop participants consequently proposed the following recommendations and suggested the following programmes:

Amongst the causes of the deterioration and disappearance of objects from our cultural heritage are: plundering in archaeological sites, illicit traffic of cultural heritage, extreme climatic conditions, as well as the lack of specialized personnel.

In the light of the above, the participants recommended that:

• Each museum should undertake a systematic inventory of its collections;
• This inventory should be recorded on standardized forms used by all the museums of the continent. Technical assistance, coordination and monitoring of this programme by concerned international organizations such as ICOM, ICCROM and WAMP is desirable;
• This manual inventory should serve as a basis for the computerization of museographic documentation and should include collections outside the country.

The Accra workshop participants suggested that a programme for computerizing inventories throughout Africa should be implemented in order to create an African Data Bank to which all museums throughout the continent would have access.

To carry out this operation, it would be useful to create a national and international fund to technically and financially support this project (equipping each country with a uniform computer system)."

Move to initial page about the Handbook or the Role of inventories

author: ICOM; updated June 1995