Heritage management in Ethiopia benefits from fellow’s Irish experience
Getu Assefa Wondimu graduated with an MSc in World Heritage Management from University College Dublin in 2007. After returning to his native Ethiopia, he established a new office to protect the country’s heritage sites and develop sustainable tourism initiatives.
Getu conducting an inventory of heritage in the Tigray Region of northern Ethiopia
Prior to my fellowship, I was a team leader for the National Inventory of Cultural Heritages and for a programme on Heritage Training and Education.
From my studies in UCD and my stay in Ireland, I got international experience and knowledge in World Heritage Management. I became more confident that Ethiopia can use its rich heritage resources for socio-economic development. I came to know international conventions which can be used on a regular basis at my workplace and got the chance to learn how Ireland has prospered and achieved economic progress in a relatively short time.
After returning back to Ethiopia, I spoke with the director of my institution and came to an understanding to establish an office which is exclusively dedicated to the eight World Heritage Sites of Ethiopia. We called it the World Heritage Sites Management Co-ordinating Office and I became the first head of this Office. It is working closely with international organisations such as UNESCO.
The system I established is appreciated and taken as a valuable gesture by UNESCO and the Government of Ethiopia, and what began as a one-man office has since been restructured to be staffed by twenty-five employees.
The Office has been engaged in a series of capacity building activities for Ethiopian professionals in the field of heritage protection. It also organises community support programs for people living in World Heritage Sites and their environs and has made a great contribution in the effort to bring sustainable development to the country through developing responsible tourism and heritage protection. There is a plan to open offices in all the eight World Heritage Sites in Ethiopia.
Another fellow student from UCD, Ms. Tsehay Eshete, has now replaced me as head of the Office. Since the 1st of January, 2010, I have been working as a National Culture Officer for the UNESCO Cluster Office in Addis Ababa. All these achievements are due to the confidence institutions have in UCD’s academic excellence and the knowledge and skills I got during my time in Dublin.
I can’t cite all the gains I achieved during my stay as a fellow student in Ireland. The impact is at personal, family, community, institutional and country level.
Staying Connected
I also maintained my relationship with my university, UCD, and we have already implemented one joint project to establish a site management plan for the World Heritage Site of Lalibela. For this project my lecturers and I prepared a proposal and secured a grant from the Irish Department of Environment, Heritage and Local Government. It has been a successful project and there is an understanding that we shall continue with other projects.
Although Ethiopia is now on the right track of development and among the rapidly progressing countries, it remains one of the poorest countries in the world.
The Irish experience shows that education is the most important instrument in the fight against poverty and we fellow students educated in Ireland in different disciplines must prove that this works practically. For this I strongly propose that we need to establish an association for the Fellows who have returned back from Ireland.