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- Convenors:
-
Vincent Hiribarren
(King's College London)
Fabienne Chamelot (University of Portsmouth)
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- Stream:
- Politics and International Relations
- Location:
- Appleton Tower, Lecture Theatre 5
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 12 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Archives play an often overlooked role in administering a population, disrupting a pre-existing national narrative and more generally supporting state policy. This panel seeks to explore the relationship between archives, governance and policy-making on the African continent.
Long Abstract:
This panel seeks to reflect on the archival practices in relation to governing and nation-building. Essential to accountability and transparency, archives are also crucial to the support of a national narrative and to connecting people together within a state. With the rise of digital technology and globalisation, their role as governing tools is all the more important, both perpetuating and prompting new approaches to citizenship and state. For instance, while colonial archives often symbolise a disruption in the national history, the wave of archival digitization that the African continent currently undergoes seems to offer opportunities to revisit access to governmental and historical records and documents. Yet these issues prompt important questions which go from intellectual property to sovereignty, not to mention economic stakes or recent initiatives to decolonise archives. Therefore, this panel will engage with archives and their current relationship with governance and policy-making on the African continent. We welcome papers on the relationship between archives and good governance, the recent digitisation of African archives or the concept of archival decolonisation.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 12 June, 2019, -Paper short abstract:
This paper will present the next issue of History in Africa entitled: 'Archives, the Digital Turn and Governance in Africa' (2020).
Paper long abstract:
This paper will address the wave of digitisation of archives in Africa over the last fifteen years. With the rise of information technologies, an increasing part of public - and to some extent private - African archives are being digitised and made accessible on the internet. This wave of digitisation is usually seen as a progress with the help of ambitious initiatives applying new technologies to cultural heritage of humanity such as the rescue of the manuscripts of Timbuktu or the Endangered Archives programme at the British Library. Yet as much as these new technologies raise enthusiasm, they also prompt discussions amongst researchers and archivists, which go from intellectual property to sovereignty and governance.
Paper short abstract:
A number of African countries made commitments to archival development in their Open Government Partnership action plans. How far has that work progressed and what are the current and historical impediments to archival work in those countries?
Paper long abstract:
A number of African countries made commitments to archival development in their Open Government Partnership action plans. These commitment recognised the link between records and archives as evidence, and the accountability necessary for open government. They focus on revising archival legislation, building technical capacity, standardising records management systems, and preparing for digital preservation.
This paper will present an assessment of how far work on the commitments has progressed, and explore the impediments. It will show that many of the issues faced by African national archives have roots in the colonial period and have been compounded by years of neglect of archives, archival infrastructure and archival work. The paper posits that aspirations to openness will not be realised until archival thinking is brought into policy work, system design and civic culture.
Paper short abstract:
Archives represent the memory of a nation. In Burkina Faso, the Political will has been manifested with the reinforcement of archives management politics which become a tool promoting democracy and development. However, archives are destroyed during political crisis.
Paper long abstract:
Archives are created by individuals, companies and administrations for memory purposes. Their good management allows the constitution of the collective memory of a Nation. In Burkina Faso, the awareness of archives importance appears with the democratization in 1991. The creation of the National Archives and its linking to the Presidency of the Republic, denotes a political will to make it an instrument in the service of democracy and development. The execution of the project "good archive for good governance" in the public administration and the drafting of a national archives policy contribute to this political will to make memory, a tool of good governance.
However, we note that in Burkina Faso, since 1998, Justice and the National Assembly both symbols of democracy and good governance are attacked by protesters during crises. As an illustration, we can quote the destruction, the sacking and the burning of Koudougou and Bobo Dioulasso courthouse archives and also the National Assembly archives during the popular riot in 2014.
Institutions' archives destruction lead to the disappearance of the proofs of their functioning and thus raising the problem of their digitization. While, these evidences constitute a source of transparency and good governance.
The purpose of this contribution is to understand the link between archives, democracy and good governance by highlighting the place of archives in the formulation of development policies in Burkina Faso.
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