24 Oct 2023

The Botswana National Archives and Records Services (BNARS) has been funded with P6m to establish the National Audio-visual Centre. 

This was announced at a media briefing on the commemoration of the World Day for Audio-visual Heritage to be held in Gaborone on Friday.

Briefing the media, Director of BNARS Ms Dineo Phuti said commemorating the World Day for Audio-visual Heritage was testimony of government’s commitment to the management of audio-visual heritage following the UNESCO 2005 General Convention, which proclaimed October 27 as the World Day for Audio-visual Heritage globally. 

Botswana joined the world in commemorating the day last year for the first time. 

“This has helped us in engaging more and reflecting on the value of audio-visual heritage and its preservation measures,” said Ms Phuti. 

She said audio-visual materials were one of the constituents of documentary heritage with similar importance as conventional archives or records. 

The aim of commemorating this day is to raise awareness of the need to take urgent measures and acknowledge the importance of audio-visual materials as sources of information, to position audio-visual heritage materials as resources of educational value in enriching curricula, to raise awareness among the media fraternity in exploiting the historical value of documentary heritage for contemporary reporting on issues of sustainable development. 

The day is held also to highlight best practices on safeguarding documentary heritage at risk. On this year’s theme: Your Window to the World’, Ms Phuti said safeguarding of heritage enabled everyone to observe events they did not attend, listen to past presentations as well as give accounts of issues that were informative and could provide entertainment. 

She said these could be preserved in the form of recorded sounds and visual imagery captured on film and video. 

“The products allow us to recognise and appreciate our diverse culture and we are able to learn a lot from them about ourselves and history,” said Ms Phuti. Meanwhile, BNARS Deputy Director, Mr Gopolang Maakwe, said the audio-visual material space needed urgent attention including infrastructure, legislative framework and resources among others. 

“We are acknowledging our baby steps towards normalisation of apparent gaps by ensuring that our frameworks are robust to contend with the management of the audio-visual materials in our country,” Maakwe said.

He said they have established the National Committee under the auspices of Memory of the World Programme, which by extension would pave dialogue within and without the region.

He also said BNARS is working towards ensuring the implementation of the UNESCO 2015 Recommendation Concerning the Preservation of, and Access to, Documentary Heritage, Including in Digital Form. Ends