More than songs and stories: The nexus between cultural records and national development

Abstract

This article examines the little researched link between cultural records and national development, considering, in particular, the role African cultural information could play in spurring the continent’s development. It argues that cultural records play a significant, if oft-overlooked and little understood, role in national development. Furthermore, it suggests that if the information deposited and derived from records documenting culture is not included in policy making and analyses of development, the development process is actually shortchanged. The study pays attention to the African context in which this issue is particularly heightened due to a general disregard for the relevance of good records management to national development, and inadequate financial support for the archives, libraries, museums and indigenous knowledge centers responsible for documenting and preserving culture and heritage.

Promoting access to indigenous information in Africa: Challenges and requirements

“…The NetDiploma project aimed to address four key research questions, viz. What are the key cultural, historical, political, linguistic and technology enablers and challenges to community access to information in Africa? How can modern ICT and mobile technologies be used to facilitate access to information required for education, health and wellbeing, cultural integration, agriculture, tourism etc? What policies and practices are required for developing and managing a free DPLAf? What further research is needed to enable the development of a DPLAf? Some of the findings of the project corroborate recent research published in this journal, such as: the general disregard for the relevance of good records management practices and inadequate financial support for the archives, libraries, museums and indigenous knowledge centres responsible for documenting and preserving culture and heritage (Ashie-Nikoi, 2019); data integrity in terms of completeness, accuracy, credibility and relevance, as well as infrastructure and capacity, as some the key barriers to making African indigenous information accessible online (Lynch et al, 2020); and the lack of a standard policy guiding digitisation projects and a lack of knowledge or in-depth understanding of Web archiving and its prospect as a digital preservation measure (Balogun and Kalusopa, 2021). In addition, the findings provide new or nuanced knowledge from the content provider perspective.…”

“…the general disregard for the relevance of good records management practices and inadequate financial support for the archives, libraries, museums and indigenous knowledge centres responsible for documenting and preserving culture and heritage (Ashie-Nikoi, 2019);…”