Departments > Landscapes and Heritage

In the framework of the intercultural "Slave Route" project, EPA was contracted to implement the joint UNESCO-WTO "Cultural Tourism on the Slave Route" programme, in 12 African countries, 11 French-speaking: Benin, Togo, Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Mali, Cameroon, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Chad, Central African Republic, and one English-speaking country: Ghana.

Kaga Poungoubou, hiding place, RCA

Launched in Accra in 1995, the "Cultural Tourism on the Slave Route" programme's objective is to "link in an intimate way, the ethical requirements of the presentation of the memory of the Slave Trade that historians now consider as the 'biggest tragedy of Human history by its amplitude and duration' with the necessities of economic and social development". It is therefore the main economical part of the "Slave Route" project.

Objectives

• make a survey of sites and memory places linked to the slave trade and study their rehabilitation and enhancement conditions, in view of cultural tourism activities in the framework of national, sub-regional or regional policies
• assess the state of practitioners in the field of cultural tourism, and make suggestions for a global training programme in this field.

El Mina fort, Ghana

Results

• 118 sites have been surveyed
• an assessment of the training of cultural guides in the countries concerned by the study has been made
• paste-up of a guide: Sur la Route de l’Esclave en Afrique occidentale et centrale – Guide de tourisme culturel.