Press release								
9th October 1999

BIRTH of the International Council of African Museums

3 to 9 October 1999, Lusaka, Zambia

Seventy-five museum professionals from all over the African continent
meeting in Lusaka, Zambia, officially inaugurated AFRICOM (International
Council of African Museums) as a non-governmental, autonomous and
pan-African organization of museums.

Co-organized by the National Museums Board (Ministry of Tourism of Zambia)
and ICOM (International Council of Museums) under the patronage of Alpha
Oumar Konaré, President of the Republic of Mali, the Constituent Assembly of
AFRICOM was held from 3 to 9 October 1999 in Lusaka, Zambia, on the theme
"Building together with the community: a challenge for African museums".

A woman, Mrs Shaje'a Tshiluila,  from the Democratic Republic of Congo was
elected President of the AFRICOM Board of Directors for a three-year term.
Mrs. Tshiluila stressed the fact that "AFRICOM must help professionals in
Africa to create museums adapted to the continent" and wished to recall the
words of President Konaré who, in 1991, when he was President of ICOM, said
"It is time, high time, to call all of this into question, to "kill", and I
do mean kill, the Western model of museums in Africa so that new methods for
the preservation and promotion of Africa`s cultural heritage can be allowed
to flourish".

Together with Shaje`a Tshiluila, a treasurer and representatives of the six
regions of Africa were also elected until the year 2002:

Treasurer:  Jean-Aime Rakotoarisoa, Madagascar

Regional Representatives:  

     North Africa:  Ali Amahan, Morocco
     East Africa:  Kassaye Begashaw, Ethiopia
     West Africa:  Samuel Sidibe, Mali
     Southern Africa: Tickey Pule, Botswana
     Indian Ocean:  Ali Mohamed Gou, Comoros

Kenya won against Nigeria as host for the AFRICOM Headquarters. The AFRICOM
Secretariat will thus set up its offices on the premises of the National
Museums of Kenya which has offered technical and logistic facilities to
AFRICOM.

Grouped into three workshops, the participants debated the following themes:
Museums and Community; Education, Management and Professional Training;
Networks. The discussions and the exchanges of professional practices led to
the drafting of a programme of AFRICOM activities for the three years to
come which was adopted in the Plenary Sessions.

The activities and the projects of this programme cover a great variety of
subjects. Training, professional capacity building, museum autonomy and
heritage risk protection were retained. The professionals also wished to
include projects for the intangible heritage, multiculturialism, cultural
tourism and management of human remains.

Finally, the participants, after lengthy discussion, adopted the statutes of
the organisation that will govern AFRICOM, its bodies and its fields of
intervention. A three-year budget was also adopted.

If AFRICOM, the International Council of African Museums, is above all the
pan-African organisation of museums, it is already open to the other
continents. The representative of the Regional Organisation for Asia and the
Pacific present during this Assembly, as well as the representative of
Bolivia, were welcomed to AFRICOM as Associated Members, which is proof of
the dynamism of this new organization.

At the end of this Constituent Assembly, Jacques Perot, President of ICOM,
expressed pleasure at the birth of this new institution that he qualified as
a major event for the future of African museums. He stressed that ICOM would
maintain close and privileged links with AFRICOM.

The Constituent Assembly of AFRICOM received support from:
The Ford Foundation, the Getty Grant Programme of the J. Paul Getty Trust,
The Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) and the
Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida).


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