ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the geopolitics, socio-economic, and heritage management contexts of Africa, which demonstrates the irony of having abundant resources but unable to mitigate the socio-economic challenges at World Heritage Sites (WHS) in Africa. As a result, tensions between conservation and development at WHS have increased, yet pre-colonial societies of Africa had pioneering spirit and experiences in balancing conservation and development. The modern heritage management systems have ignored this experience and are extremely cautious in handling this matter. Furthermore, the World Heritage Convention and the top-bottom governance system of WHS have intensified the tensions at WHS. Though this tension is slowly being addressed, national sovereignty, inclusive decision-making, and trade-off options in balancing conservation and development are still being ignored. The chapter concludes that conservation and development do not often plan or integrate into each other in Africa, hence the absence of culture statistics measuring the role of heritage in development.
