Benefitting country(ies): Cameroon

Overview:

Implemented by UNESCO’s Multisectoral Regional Office for Central Africa, in cooperation with the Ministry of Arts and Culture, this eighteen-month project aims to lay the foundations for the sustainable safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage in Cameroon, re-orienting the inventorying system previously set up in the country. The project involves capacity building for the creation of participatory community-based inventories, raising awareness of living heritage safeguarding among the communities concerned and the general public, conducting a pilot inventory in the Centre Region, and strengthening the country’s living heritage safeguarding policy. Designed in collaboration with the stakeholders involved in living heritage safeguarding, the project’s implementation is based on a dynamic partnership between the State, twelve ethnocultural communities of the Centre Region, academics and researchers, cultural associations, non-governmental organizations, the media and the decentralized territorial authorities. Activities include training of trainers and inventorying workshops, as well as data collection, processing and inventorying activities. They also include community gatherings and radio, television and press conferences on living heritage safeguarding. In the long term, the results of this project is expected to help systematize and expand participatory inventorying activities in Cameroon and to encourage the implementation of safeguarding projects in the rest of the country.

01/01/2024 - 31/01/2026 – Inventory of the intangible cultural heritage of traditional and religious festivities in the municipalities of Bluefields, Diriamba, León, El Viejo and Masaya28/12/2023 - 31/12/2025 – Xhubleta, skills, craftmanship and forms of usage