During four years (1999-2002) EPA carried out a series of surveys to have an overview of the relationship between schools and museums in Africa. The first survey took place in 20 countries and concentrated on the attendance to museums and related institutions…
The results show a critical lack of attendance of school publics: about 90% of African primary schoolchildren have never been to the museums of their town. And anyway, apart from a few cases, these museums are unable to receive them: they lack adequate infrastructure and staff adequately trained to work with children.

7 countries of Francophone Africa (Benin, Burkina Faso, Republic of Guinea, Republic of Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Senegal) were the subject of an in-depth survey to measure the place of cultural heritage within the school curricula. The conclusion is alarming: African schools ignore cultural contexts; they lack methodology and tools to talk about them, thereby encouraging prejudices and preconceived ideas.
The collected data were the subject of a workshop organised at EPA from December 16 to 19, 2002. The workshop brought together about 15 resource persons from various backgrounds coming from the 7 target countries, to which were added representatives of the Fédération africaine des associations des parents d’éleves et d’étudiants – FAPE (African federation of associations of pupils’ and students’ parents). Four series of suggestions were made in order to improve the quality of the cultural education of young Africans. They can be summarized as follows:

Adopt an enlarged definition of the word museum, because while museums are generally limited to large African towns, tangible and/or intangible occurrences of cultural heritage exist everywhere.

Take the opportunity of education reforms in most of the concerned countries to invest natural “entrances” to cultural heritage represented by disciplines such as history, geography, art, music, civic instruction, etc.

Develop methodological approaches for the knowledge of cultural heritage for museum animators as well as school teachers and associations of pupils’ parents. Projects around the use of traditional tales were presented and commented on.

Create a network of people working on the subject that suggests and develops experiments on a larger and larger scale.

zdroj: ICOMOS Slovakia