A History Of Conservation Of Built Heritage Sites Of The Swahili Coast In Tanzania

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African Historical Review
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A history of conservation of built heritage sites of
the Swahili Coast in Tanzania
Elgidius B. Ichumbaki
To cite this article: Elgidius B. Ichumbaki (2016) A history of conservation of built heritage
sites of the Swahili Coast in Tanzania, African Historical Review, 48:2, 43-67, DOI:
10.1080/17532523.2016.1298509
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17532523.2016.1298509
Published online: 12 Apr 2017.
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43
African Historical Review
Volume 48 | number 2 | 2016
pp. 43–67
DoI: 10.1080/17532523.2016.1298509
Print Issn 1753-2523 | online 1753-2531
© Unisa Press
university
of south africa
ARtICLe
A HIstoRy oF ConseRVAtIon oF BUILt
HeRItAge sItes oF tHe sWAHILI CoAst
In tAnzAnIA
Elgidius B. Ichumbaki
University of Dar es salaam, tanzania
ichumbaki@udsm.ac.tz
ABstRACt
the interaction between the swahili Coast of the present-day tanzanian coast and
other parts of the Indian Ocean world dates back to the first millennium AD. This
commercial communication resulted in the rise of several coastal city-states (stone-
built towns), some of which date back to the tenth century. Unfortunately, some of
these states started to collapse during the second half of the second millennium and
the majority of them is in a ruinous state. these material remains, which according
to the tanzania’s Antiquities Act of 1964 deserve legal protection, have not been
studied comprehensively mainly to establish their conservation history. the current
article addresses this problem, and by analysing documents, it establishes the
conservation history of monuments and historic buildings of the swahili Coast in
tanzania. Research results indicate that some built heritage sites started decaying
during the fourteenth century AD. Because of recognising the importance of these
built heritage sites, communities of the region embarked on strategies to care these
built heritage sites. this observation contradicts the european conventional wisdom
maintaining that, in Africa, conservation of built heritage sites such as monuments
and historic buildings began in the nineteenth century and was propagated by
european colonialists.
Keywords: architectural heritage, built heritage sites, history of conservation,
swahili Coast

44
Ichumbaki A History of Conservation of Built Heritage sites of the swahili Coast in tanzania
IntRoDUCtIon
The area popularly known as the Swahili Coast is a coastline of about 3000 km and
extends from Mogadishu in Somalia to Sofala in Mozambique. The area also includes
the islands of Comoros, Zanzibar, Mafia and northern Madagascar. The entire Swahili
Coast-area is dotted with monumental structures and historic buildings of varying
sizes and ages.1
For the purpose of this article, however, I will concentrate on a part
of the Swahili Coast, namely the present-day Tanzanian coast. In focusing on the
Tanzania’s Swahili Coast alone, I aim to document a fuller history of conservation of
built heritage sites specific to Tanzania which may not necessarily be similar in other
political divisions. For instance, compared to the Kenyan coast where monumental
structures and historic buildings have been documented2
and some are used for
tourism purposes, the majority of these sites in Tanzania are overgrown by vegetation
and not regularly maintained.3
Also, the laws to conserve monuments and historic
buildings of Tanzania are different from those of other countries whose coasts make
part of the Swahili Coast area. While the Antiquities Act of Tanzania (1964) still
contains loopholes leading to the destruction of built heritage sites, the Antiquities
and Monuments Act of Kenya (1983) is more effective.
For these reasons, this article will focus on the coast ofTanzania to investigate the
history of conservation of the built heritage sites. As used in this article, the concept
‘built heritage sites’ means constructed assets ranging from large representative
ensembles,buildings,monuments,coral-builtgravesandtombs,mortuariesandruins,
to modest ancient dwellings erected along the Tanzanian coast before the 1920s. The
time limit of 1920 aims to maintain the approximate age of what is considered to be
a ‘heritage’ desiring legal protection, as per the Tanzania’s Antiquities Act No. 10 of
1964 (see bibliography) and its amendment Act No. 22 of 1979 (see bibliography).
In this article, built heritage sites in the form of stone-towns4
and the conservation
projects to achieve the continued survival of monuments and historic buildings are
discussed in a chronological order. The first section of the article briefly introduces
built heritage sites of the Swahili Coast in Tanzania. Section two presents the
1 See T. H. Wilson, Swahili Monumental Architecture and Archaeology North of the Tana River
(Nairobi: National Museum of Kenya, 2016).
2 Wilson, Swahili Monumental C. M. Kusimba, ‘Early African Cities: Their Role in the Shaping
of Urban and Rural Interaction Spheres’, in J. Marcus and J. Sabloff, eds, The Ancient City: New
Perspectives on Urbanism in the Old and New World (Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research
Press, 2008), 229–46.
3 E. B. Ichumbaki, ‘Monumental Ruins, Baobab Trees and Spirituality: Perceptions on Values and
Uses of Built Heritage of the East African Coast’(PhD thesis, University of Dar es Salaam, 2015),
115–48.
4 These are East Africa’s coastal city-states whose buildings were constructed by using coral stones
and then bonded together using lime-mortar.

45
conservation history together with the legal and practical efforts aimed at protecting
built heritage sites of the region. The final section investigates some clues as to why
conservation strategies gained momentum during the 1990s and 2000s.
HIstoRICAL BACkgRoUnD
The Swahili Coast in Tanzania boasts several monumental structures and historic
buildings. Despite this being the case, it is unfortunate that a comprehensive list
of these monumental structures is lacking. Reasons for this limitation could
be many, but lack of local experts in this area of heritage speciality cannot be
excluded. Because of a lack of specialists, there have been limited efforts from both
government departments and institutions and independent researchers to establish a
comprehensive inventory of all the built heritage sites of the Tanzanian coast. The
few projects, for instance by the Department of Antiquities in the late 1950s, which
aimed at documenting monuments, were limited to only a few places along the coast.
There are, however, some conservation attempts5
which only pay attention
to a few sites and monuments that are easily visible and accessible. Some of the
documented sites are on the islands of Mafia, Zanzibar, Kilwa Kisiwani, Songo
Mnara and Pemba. A few more sites are found on the Tanzanian coastline in the area
between Tanga and Kilwa. The reasons for prioritising sites with mosques according
to Garlake6
are threefold: mosques are both religious buildings and focal points of
the Islamic community fulfilling the functions of refuge, court, school and treasury;
mosques were made using the best techniques with elaborate decorative elements;
and finally, according to Islamic law, religious buildings such as mosques are rarely
destroyed because their materials cannot be used as building materials unless the
building is either a mosque or a Koran school.7
Hence, the early efforts to document
the built heritage sites held the view that mosques were relatively well preserved
compared to other non-religious sites. It was probably because of this notion that
Garlake visited and documented only 33 built heritage sites with mosques.8
5 N. H. Chittick, Kilwa: An Islamic Trading City on the East African Coast; the Finds, Vol. I & 2.
(Nairobi: British Institute in Eastern Africa, 1974); N. H. Chittick, Kisimani Mfia: Excavation
at an Island Settlement on the East African Coast (Dar es Salaam: Department of Antiquities,
1961); P. S. Garlake, The Early Islamic Architecture of the East African Coast: Memoir of British
Institute of History and Archaeology in East Africa (London: Oxford University Press, 1966); G.
Freeman-Grenville, The Medieval History of Coast of Tanganyika. (London: Oxford University
Press 1962); United Republic of Tanzania (hereafter URT), Annual Report of the Department of
Antiquities (Dar es Salaam: Government Printing Press 1958–9).
6 Garlake, The Early Islamic Architecture.
7 See URT, Annual Report of the Department of Antiquities 1958–9.
8 Ichumbaki, ‘Monumental Ruins, Baobab Trees and Spirituality’.

46
Whereas the early efforts by Garlake to survey, record and document the built
heritage sites of the Swahili Coast are appreciated, his analysis needs examination.
First, the analysis concentrated on mosques and big monuments without considering
other smaller constructions within the stone-built towns. These small monuments
are likely to have important and exceptional features which the mosques and
big monuments do not have. For example, surveys from south-eastern Tanzania9
revealed some sites which are not in groups (in the form of a stone town) but have
architectural and historic significance. This means that concentrating on sites with
robust built heritage sites while neglecting isolated monuments and buildings that
are equally important may result in the loss of some important built heritage sites.
Second, dealing with mosques and connecting them with Islamic religion, as
Garlake did, can also be interpreted as neglecting local cultures (e.g. spiritual sites)
and their roles in the construction of these built heritage sites. The consequence
of this neglect would include but not be limited to destruction of sites due to the
perception that these heritage sites do not belong to ‘real inhabitants’. Third, the
analysis centred on describing the built heritage sites without considering the views,
ideas, attitudes and perceptions of the communities (settled, kinship-based villagers)
using the sites and in whose landscape they are located. Avoiding to analyse the local
communities’ systems of life indicates that the early efforts to document the built
heritage sites did not see the roles of local people in making them. Consequently,
the built heritage sites or rather stone towns were only connected with the Arabs and
Shirazi under the assumption that local communities did not have any contribution
in making the Swahili stone towns.
This European colonial thinking, however, which dominated Swahili scholarship
during the 1950–70s, did not go unchallenged. It has frequently been challenged
and continues to be challenged today.10
Contrary to Garlake’s and other European
colonial works, postcolonial scholarship indicated the roles of local people. However,
in regards to built heritage sites, few studies have been done. The majority of the
studies conducted are of a more archaeological nature. The excavations conducted
within the stone towns inform scholarship about the nature of material remains from
the sites and the kind of information the archaeological materials convey. From a
9 E. J. B. Pollard, ‘Maritime Infrastructure along the Tanzanian Coast in the Early Second
Millennium AD: Survey and Excavations from Lindi to Kilwa in Southeast Tanzania Conducted
from July to August, 2012.’A Report Submitted to the Department of Antiquities (Nairobi: British
Institute in Eastern Africa, 2013).
10 P. R. Schmidt, ed. Postcolonial Archaeologies in Africa (Sante Fe: School of Advanced Research
Press, 2009) and several articles therein.

47
historical viewpoint, little efforts to document and interpret the conservation of built
heritage sites exist.11
The current and probably most ‘comprehensive’study of built heritage sites along
theTanzanian coast is that of 2007 and it concentrated on ‘inventory’.12
This inventory
was compiled as part of the Marine and Coastal Environment Management Project
(MACEMP) seeking to improve the management of coastal resources to sustainably
conserve them and improve the livelihoods of the coastal communities. Three areas
were involved in this study: the Mafia archipelago, the Rufiji delta and Kilwa Bay.
The terms of reference and the final reports reveal that the project’s major aims
were twofold: to undertake inventories of cultural and architectural heritage and to
provide relevant recommendations that would enhance the sustainable conservation
of ‘prioritized sites’. Seventy built heritage sites were documented. Also, some
recommendations were provided, including: giving legal protection to built heritage
sites; the government collaborating with other built heritage sites stakeholders to
train and recruit local experts for undertaking conservation activities, and restoring,
renovating, and rehabilitating built heritage sites that are in a dilapidated state.13
Generally speaking, there is little knowledge concerning the history of
conservationofbuiltheritagesites.Whereasunderstandingthehistoryofconservation
of built heritage sites is important, one needs to first understand the history of an area
and the built heritage sites themselves. However, as noted elsewhere,14
knowing the
history of heritage conservation corresponds with the history of heritage itself. The
history of heritage is endless and has no terminal point. The built heritage sites of
the Tanzanian coast have been in place for a long time. They are always located,
interpreted, given meanings, classified, conserved and they are sometimes lost. As
indicated in Figure 1 below, identifying, documenting, interpreting and conserving
the built heritage sites valued by communities is not a systematic process. It is a cyclic
programme. In this regard, the built heritage sites should be recognised as malleable,
present day-centred and future-oriented products articulated and consumed through
time. This model is crucial for understanding the built heritage sites along the Swahili
Coast. The model states that, unless one understands the nature of inhabitants at a
certain place and how these residents changed overtime, revealing the nature and
11 For the few studies conducted see J. Heathcott, ‘Heritage in the Dynamic City: The Politics and
Practice of Conservation on the Swahili Coast’, International Journal of Urban and Regional
Research 37, 1 (2012), 215–37; UNESCO, World Heritage Papers Series No. 36: Swahili Historic
Urban Landscapes (Paris, 2013), and W. Bissel, Urban Design, Chaos, and Colonial Power in
Zanzibar (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010).
12 K. Moon and P. Blanchard, Kilwa, Rufiji and Mafia: Cultural Heritage Inventory Findings and
Recommendations. A Report for the Marine and Coastal Environmental Management (MACEMP)
Project, Final Report Part I & II (Dar es Salaam: Government Printer 2008).
13 Moon and Blanchard, Kilwa Rufiji and Mafia.
14 D. C. Harvey, ‘The History of Heritage’, in B. Graham and P. Howard, eds, The Ashgate Research
Companion to Heritage and Identity (Ashgate: Aldershot, 2008), 19–36.

48
type of the built heritage sites evolving over time together with their conservation
history becomes difficult. The next section introduces coastal built heritage sites
alongside their history.
BUILt HeRItAge sItes on tHe sWAHILI CoAst In
tAnzAnIA
The built heritage sites of the Swahili Coast in Tanzania can be grouped into five
architectural periods based on their stylistic designs and their associated communities.
The first period is pre-Swahili, dated from 800 AD backwards. Built heritage sites of
this period were constructed by using mud and wattle and thatched by using either
grass or plant leaves. The sites are considered by some archaeologists working in the
region15
to be the real constructions of the pre-Swahili period and continue to exist.
15 A. LaViolette and J. Fleisher, ‘The Urban History of a Rural Place: Swahili Archaeology on
Pemba Island, Tanzania, AD 700–1500’, International Journal of African Historical Studies
42(3), 2009, 433–55; M. C. Horton,and J. Middleton, The Swahili: The Social Landscape of a
Mercantile Society (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000); F. A. Chami, The Tanzanian Coast in the First
Millenium AD: An Archaeology of the Iron-Working, Farming Communities (Uppsala: Societas
Archaeologica Upsaliensis, 1994).
Figure 1: Figure 1: Diagrammatic explanations on the history of the built
heritage sites
Source: The author, incorporating ideas from Harvey (2008)

49
The vertical supports of these architectures were typically made from mangrove
poles, which later framed the ceilings of stone town houses.16
Very likely, the early
structures had high ceilings for cooling, evidenced both by the maximum length
of a mature mangrove pole and by the soil compression from the vertical loads.
Typically, these structures were built on pedestals so that a low ‘bench’ surrounded
the house, and that additions were made by building new separate structures, which
over time resulted in the accretion of kin-based compounds.17
Along the Tanzanian
coast, signatures indicative of their existence are daub and pole holes, the majority
of which have been spotted during archaeological excavations.18
The second architectural period is what has been referred to as Swahili
architecture.19
It includes all architectural constructions such as mosques, palaces
and stone tombs, as well as navigational complexes made between the eighth and
sixteenth centuries. Examples include constructions now in ruins found at the stone
towns of Kilwa Kisiwani and Songo Mnara, Kaole, Kunduchi Mbuamaji, Kua and
Kisimani-Mafia and Sudi, to mention but a few. These built heritage sites were
constructed using coral stones bonded together with lime mortar. While some of these
sites such as those of Kilwa Kisiwani and Songo Mnara are recognised and listed as
World Heritage Sites, others have not been fully documented. Some are overgrown,
a few have been wiped away by the ocean, and others have been destroyed by people
in search of building materials.
The third period of built heritage sites along the Tanzanian Coast corresponds
with the arrival of the Portuguese in the region, dated from around 1500 AD. There
is a scholarly argument that the impact of the Portuguese has been overdetermined,
at least with respect to their influence on architecture, landscape, and the built
environment. Indeed, while there are clearly architectural flourishes borrowed from
the Portuguese, there is no Swahili stone town that looks like a Portuguese city.
This contrasts with cities in northern and coastal Morocco, for example, that were
very much influenced by Portuguese design. Nevertheless, the Portuguese presence
16 M.C. Horton, ‘Swahili Architecture, Space, and Social Structure’, in M. Pearson and C. Richards,
eds, Architecture and Order: Approaches to Social Space, 132–52 (New York: Routledge, 1997).
17 L.W. Donley, ‘House Power: Swahili Space and Symbolic Markers’, in I. Hodder, ed. Symbolic
and Structural Archaeology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 63–73.
18 T. J. Biginagwa, ‘Historical Archaeology of the 19th-Century Caravan Trade in Northeastern
Tanzania: A Zoo-Archaeological Perspective’ (PhD thesis, University of York, 2012);
LaViolette, A., W. B. Fawcett, N. J. Karoma, and P. R. Schmidt, ‘Survey and Excavations between
Dar es Salaam and Bagamoyo: University of Dar es Salaam Archaeological Field School 1988
(Part II)’, Nyame Akuma 52 (1999), 74–78; J. Fleisher and A. LaViolette, ‘Elusive Wattle-and-
Daub: Finding the Hidden Majority in the Archaeology of the Swahili’, Azania: Archaeological
Research in Africa 34, 1 (1999), 87–108.
19 F. A. Chami, ‘Kilwa and the Swahili Towns: Reflections from an Archaeological Perspective’
in K. Larsen, ed., Knowledge, Renewal and Religion: Repositioning and Changing Ideological
and Material Circumstances among the Swahili on the East African Coast (Uppsala: Nordiska
Afrikainstitutet, 2009), 38–56.

50
along the Tanzanian coast is evident at least in the form of architectural styles.20
However, because the Portuguese did not stay longer along the coast of present-day
Tanzania, they did not invest much in architectural developments. The Old Gereza
(Kilwa Fort) of Kilwa Kisiwani is the only representative example of the Portuguese
built heritage site.
The fourth period of built heritage sites is Arabian. After the Portuguese had lost
their hegemony and especially from 1700 to the 1850s, coastal domination shifted
into the hands of Sultans of Oman. By the 1840s, Sultan Seyyid Said shifted his
power base from Muscat to Zanzibar and placed the area under Omani rule. This
was the time when Zanzibar became the Sultan’s capital and controlled almost the
entire coastal region of EastAfrica. Because of this establishment, built heritage sites
with Arabic architectural styles exist in the region and some of these buildings are
still in use, especially in the historic towns of Zanzibar, Mikindani, Kilwa Kivinje
and Bagamoyo. Arguably, the Arabic (both Omani and Yemeni) period impacted
the buildings of Swahili towns, the majority of which are outside the stone towns.
The debate, which, however, goes beyond the scope of this article, is whether the
underlying architectural idiom (or, indeed, Tanzanian heritage more generally) is
African or Arab.
The fifth and last period of built heritage sites is represented by the European
colonial buildings scattered all over the Tanzanian Coast and the interior. They
include bomas, customs houses, and courts as well as residential and administrative
buildings. Although a few of these heritages have been identified, documented, and
renovated and are in use,21
the majority of them remains unknown and therefore
undocumented. Daniel Rhodes is of the view that European architectural styles
transformed the urban landscape from wattle and daub commercial centres into
rectangular stone-built townscapes.22
However, this claim goes against the grain of
the historical understanding that, when they arrived, Europeans found an already
existing stone town archipelago along the Swahili Coast.23
The foregoing discussion has indicated that the Tanzanian Swahili Coast boasts
many built heritage sites which are heterogeneous in terms of origin, past ownership,
styles, nature, robusticity and geographical locations. One issue arises from this
conclusion. That is, when and how has the conservation of these built heritage sites
been implemented? Focusing on the Tanzanian coast, the next section addresses this
issue by looking at how conservation strategies have been taking place through time.
20 D. T. Rhodes, ‘Historical Archaeology of the Nineteenth-Century Colonial Tanzania: A
Comparative Study’ (PhD thesis, University of Ulster, 2010). J. Kirkman, Men and Monuments
on the East African Coast (London: Lutterworth Press 1964); Chittick, Kilwa.
21 Rhodes, ‘Historical Archaeology of Nineteenth-century Colonial Tanzania’.
22 Ibid.
23 C. Kusimba, The Rise and Fall of Swahili States (Walnut Creek: Altamira Press. 1999).

51
ConseRVAtIon oF BUILt HeRItAge sItes ALong
tHe tAnzAnIAn CoAst
Like many other African countries, Tanzania has diverse built heritage sites. These
sites have value for their hosting and neighbouring communities. In cognisance of
their relevance, for centuries,African communities developed regulatory frameworks
to conserve them. The conservation strategies are older than the time pointed out
by scholars who trace built heritage sites’ conservation history from the second
half of the nineteenth century.24
Arguably, this thinking emanates from a colonial
ideology which sees Africa as a continent with no history prior to European colonial
times.25
One argument verifying such thinking especially during the 1960s is by the
British historian, Hugh Trevor-Riper, who remarks that ‘there is only the history of
Europeans in Africa. The rest is darkness and darkness is not a subject of history’26
.
Due to this thinking which dominated African historical scholarships of the 1960s
and 1980s, pre-colonial initiatives by Africans to conserve built heritage sites are
labelled as primitive, prehistoric and or mythological.27
Thankfully, there have been initiatives to challenge such European colonial
thinking. The initiatives started during the decolonisation process28
and formed part
of the Pan-African movements.29
Negating the European colonial ideology gained
momentum during the late 1970s and early 1980s. A few examples in support of
this argument include recognising the role of local people in the construction of the
monumental architecture of the Swahili Coast30
and Great Zimbabwe.31
Likewise
24 See H. Said. ‘The History and Current Situation of Cultural Heritage Care in Sub-Saharan Africa’,
Journal of Asian and African Studies, 8, 1, (1999), 91–100.
25 A. B. Stahl,. ‘Introduction: Changing Perspectives on Africa’s Pasts’, in A. B. Stahl, ed, African
Archaeology: A Critical Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 1–23.
26 H. Trover-Riper, ‘The Rise of Christian Europe: The Great Recovery’, The Listener 70 (1963),
871–5.
27 P.R. Schmidt and S.A Mrozowski, The Death of Prehistory (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2013).
28 For example see J.K, Nyerere, Freedom and Socialism/Uhuru na Ujamaa: A Selection from
Writings and Speeches 1965–1967 (Dar es Salaam: Oxford University Press, 1968); K. Nkrumah,
Revolutionary Path (London: Panaf Books, 1973).
29 See J. C. Miller, ‘History and Africa/Africa and History’, American Historical Review 104, 1,
(1999), 1–32; A. F. C. Holl, ‘West African Archaeology: Colonialism and Nationalism’, in P.
Robertshaw, ed., A History of African Archaeology, 296–308 (London: James Currey, 1990); M.
Posnansky, ‘African Archaeology Comes of Age’, World Archaeology 13, 3 (1982), 345–58.
30 Kusimba, The Rise and Fall of Swahili States.
31 I. Pikirayi, The Zimbabwe Culture: Origins and Decline of Southern Zambezian States (Walnut
Creek: Altamira Press, 2001); I. Pikirayi, ‘Stone Architecture and the Development of Power
in the Zimbabwe Tradition AD 1270–1830’, Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa 48, 2
(2013), 282–300.

52
several works by Felix Chami have contributed greatly in changing the European
colonial thinking on the built heritage sites of the Swahili Coast.32
Nevertheless, the European colonial interpretations of the Swahili Coast
including the built heritage assets have not lost currency.33
Despite alternative
interpretation,34
more evidence is needed to continue proving that communities that
lived along the Swahili Coast were not indifferent to the environment, including
protecting built heritage sites. It is in line with this thinking that I feel obliged to
present initiatives to protect built heritage sites along the Swahili Coast in Tanzania.
Along the Swahili Coast in Tanzania, as in other parts of Africa, strategies to
protect built heritage sites are older than presented for they existed even before
the arrival of European colonialists. During the pre-colonial period, chiefs and
spirit mediums were custodians of important built heritage sites. Unwritten laws
(customary laws, traditional rules and regulations) which existed in the form of
prescriptive taboos, avoidances and practices were used to protect heritage sites and
shrines.35
The duty to care for built heritage sites and enforce restrictions was vested
in respected community members such as headmen and chiefs.36
The built heritage
sites’ custodians decided on who could enter the heritage site, when, how and for
what purpose. On those grounds and for genuine reasons, not all members of the
family, clan or society entered the site; only a few did. As a result, built heritage sites
enjoyed full-time protection, and in that way the assets became transferable from
one generation to another. To substantiate this argument, I now concentrate on the
Tanzanian Swahili Coast.
Conservation of the built heritage sites along the Swahili Coast is as old as
the deterioration of the sites themselves. For instance, the buildings/monuments
that were erected between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries began to deteriorate
during the fourteenth century. The Great Mosque of Kilwa Kisiwani for instance
32 See several publications of F. Chami listed in E. B. Ichumbaki and H. Marufu, A Bibliography of
Tanzania’s Prehistory, Vol. 1 (Dar es Salaam: Dar es Salaam University Press, 2013), 14–7.
33 J. Fleisher, A. LaViolette, M. Horton, E. Pollard, E. Quintana Morales, T. Vernet, A. Christie, and
S. Wynne-Jones, ‘When Did the Swahili Become Maritime?’, American Anthropologist 117, 1
(2015), 100–15.
34 See E. B. Ichumbaki, ‘When Did the Swahili Become Maritime? A Response to Jeffrey Fleisher
et al. (2015)’, in L. Harris, ed. Sea Ports and Sea Power: African Maritime Cultural Landscapes
(New York: Springer, 2017).
35 S. Chirikure and G. Pwiti, ‘Community Involvement in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage
Management: An Assessment from Case Studies in Southern Africa and Elsewhere’, Current
Anthropology 49, 3 (2008), 467–85; T. O, Ranger, Voices from the Rocks: Nature, Culture, and
History in the Matopos Hills of Zimbabwe (Harare: Weaver Press, 1999); G. Mahachi, and E.
Kamuhangire, ‘Administrative Arrangements for Heritage Resource Management in Sub-Saharan
Africa’ in W. Ndoro, A. Mumma and G. Abungu, eds, Cultural Heritage and the Law: Protecting
Immovable Heritage in English Speaking Countries of Sub-Saharan Africa (Rome: ICCROM,
2009), 43–51.
36 T. Jaffroy, Traditional Conservation Practices in Africa (Rome: ICCROM, 2005).

53
was dilapidating during the fourteenth century. Due to the significance of this
building, the sixteenth century Kilwa chronicles report rehabilitations taking place
during the fourteenth century. Although some scholars consider this renovation and,
or rehabilitation to be a rebuilding and extension of the mosque due to population
increase,37
it is very likely that this was a form of conservation. It is stated in the
Kilwa chronicles:
In the time of Sultan Sulaiman ibn al-Malik al-‘Adil historians say that the Friday mosque,
which collapsed in the reign of Abu’l-Mawahib, was restored. The prime mover was Sayyid
Hajj Rush ibn Sultan Husain who was nicknamed Hasha Hazifiki. He asked Sultan Sulaiman
permission to rebuild it at his own expense. Permission was not given, but the sovereign gave
him a thousand mithkals of gold and said: Rebuild the mosque with this money.
And Sayyid Hajj Rush meditated the matter and said to himself: Unless I take this money
permission to rebuild the mosque will be refused. Thus it is best to accept the money, but I
shall rebuild it at my own expense. So he took the money and rebuilt it at his own expense
until it was complete. When Sultan Sulaiman died, Hajj Rush returned the money to his heirs.
It was thus done under God’s guidance. When the mosque was being restored, they lacked
wood to rebuild the pillars. For the original pillars were of cut stone, and there were now no
masons who could reassemble them as they were previously. This had perplexed them and
had prevented the restoration. But by Devine Providence a great tree was cast up on shore of
exactly the right length. The people recognized the hand of Devine Providence for the tree
was complete with its root and branches. They made pillars for the front part of the mosque
from the root, and there were seven pillars in all. From the branches the made rafters and
crossbeams for the front part and the two wings. At the back they built domes in imitation of
the dome of Abu’l-Mawahib as aforesaid.
The author himself has seen the man who saw the tree as mentioned, and he is Sultan
Muhammad ibn Sultan al-Husain ibn Sultan Sulaiman. The latter [sc. Sulaiman] gave the
order for the rebuilding of the mosque, while the first named ordered the writing of this story.
God knows all truth.38
As revealed in the above quotation, rehabilitation and renovation maintained the
mosque’s appearance and used similar building materials. The rehabilitation was
meant to maintain the authenticity and continued operation of the mosque. The local
community or rather the residents of Kilwa bore the restoration costs, a lessonAfrican
communities could adopt. This is not to mean that current conservation practices
ignore the profound changes in state structures, governments, and international
planning regimes. Indeed they should care for built heritage but activities such as
conservation, preservation and the general protection of built heritage sites have to
remain the responsibility of host communities, no matter how willing to help foreign
communities may be. In my view, this scenario explains why Sultan Sulaiman ibn al-
37 Garlake, The Early Islamic Architecture; Chittick, Kilwa.
38 G. Freeman-Grenville, Chronology of the Sultans of Kilwa, Tanganyika Notes and Records 50
(1958), 85–93.

54
Malik al-‘Adil did not allow Sayyid Hajj Rush ibn Sultan Husain to restore the mosque
at his own expense despite his willingness. Instead, in valuing and understanding
the need to protect built heritage sites, Sultan Sulaiman paid a thousand mithkals
of gold (equivalent to 4.68 kg) for the mosque’s restoration work. Regardless of
whether this desire and readiness came from the Sultan’s commitment to religion or
his attachment to the building, refusing to let Sayyid Hajj Rush ibn Sultan Husain
undertake the duty, at least from this article’s viewpoint, is encouraging.
The literature indicates that buildings erected between the sixteenth and
eighteenth centuries started to deteriorate during the early nineteenth century. For
instance, the Old Gereza of Kilwa Kisiwani built during the sixteenth century was
deteriorating by 1842. When H. M. Burton visited this building in 1857, it was in a
state of collapse.39
Following such deterioration, the German colonial government
showed interest in conserving the building as early as 1900. As a result of this, a
person who was in charge of the present day Kilwa District investigated the ownership
of Kilwa ruins in 1902 with the view to deciding on their better conservation. The
residents of the island informed the colonial government officer that while the gereza
(prison) belonged to the government, the rest of the ruins were owned by the shirazi
with whom they (the residents) had intermarried.40
Such a response motivated the
district administration to request ownership of all the ruins with the view to rescuing
them.
The German colonial government was provided with an area from a cemetery
near the Makutani palace enclosure to the cemetery adjacent to Malindi mosque,
an area around Husuni Ndogo and Husuni Kubwa – all of which were regarded
‘important properties’. After being assured of ownership, the colonial government
marked all provided areas with stone cairns and declared them protected properties.41
The government started to conserve the properties, and in the process it contracted
an engineer, Friedrich, in 1904 to examine all the ruins and produce a report on
their conditions alongside possible measures for their conservation. The consultant
reported that the Fort, Customs House and Small Mosque together with other
monuments on the island were in a dilapidated state and needed urgent attention.
Accordingly, 1200 rupees were required for the buildings’ rehabilitation. After
this recommendation, the German colonial government acquired funds and started
rehabilitating the monuments in 1915. Unfortunately, before considerable work was
done, all activities stopped due to the First World War.
Initiatives to conserve the built heritage such as Kilwa Fort and the Great and
Small Mosques resumed in the 1930s. In 1934, the Kilwa District Officer wrote a
letter to the Commissioner of Lindi-Mtwara province stressing the need to conserve
what he named ‘Old Arab Fort’ located near the shore. Following this call from the
39 Chittick, Kilwa.
40 Ibid.
41 Ibid.

55
District Officer in Kilwa, the Fort and Great and Small Mosques were rehabilitated
in 1936. There is a possibility that during this period the British colonial government
noted high rates of monuments destruction and thus in 1937 enacted the ‘Monument
Preservation Ordinance’. Despite this ordinance, the destruction and plundering of
the built heritage sites along the coast of Tanzania continued, especially during the
1940s and 1950s. In 1954, the destruction was reported in the Science Newsletter
by Mortimer Wheeler, a secretary of the British Academy in charge of the British
Association for the Advancement of Science, as such:
In Tanganyika, the beautiful palace masque of Kilwa Island was robbed of ancient Persian
tiles and wrecked by a former government official. At Bagamoyo, carved woodwork,
including ornamented doors, were removed and sold in the 1940s without a thought for its
historical importance. At Saadani and Mbweni, sixteenth century carvings were destroyed
and tombs broken up for lime. Great palaces in Zanzibar were destroyed, one of them to
make room for a modern school.42
Wheeler did not stop after reporting the destruction that was taking place in the
country; rather, he struggled further to make sure that a body to direct conservation
of the built heritage sites in Tanzania (Tanganyika at that time) is created. As Neville
Chittick reports,43
Wheeler was above all the spiritus rector behind the creation of
both the Department of Antiquities in Tanganyika and the British Institute of History
and Archaeology (now British Institute in Eastern Africa). The Department of
Antiquities was established in 1957. In addition, the British Government included a
subvention of £6,500 for the School of History and Archaeology in East Africa in its
budget for 1959.44
The Department ofAntiquities was created to undertake two tasks: first, to ensure
the security and conservation of the monuments, and second, from the archaeological
aspect, to investigate the history of Tanganyika.45
Since the department had only
two employees, a conservator and a foreman of antiquities, and considering the
vastness of the country and its built heritage sites, only a few monuments of the
coast which were in imminent danger of collapse received attention. Being the first
government body to deal with the protection of the built heritage sites of Tanzania,
the department implemented relevant strategies to conserve the coastal built heritage
sites. One example is a significant conservation of Kilwa and Kaole ruins to maintain
the monuments’structural stability.According to the annual report of the Department
of Antiquities for the year 1958:
a start was made on the task of the conservation of the ruins on the coast. The major efforts
was devoted to Kilwa, where work had formerly been done under the supervision of the
42 M. Wheeler, Archaeology from the Earth (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1954), 181.
43 Chittick, Kilwa.
44 URT, Annual Report of the Department of Antiquities.
45 URT, Annual Report of the Department of Antiquities.

56
District Commissioner. Work on a small scale was also carried out on the ruins at Kaole
and Tongoni, near Bagamoyo and Tanga respectively. In general the policy with regard to
conservation work is to make good the structure as they stand, new work being added only
where it is structurally necessary for the safety of the building, or where the greater part of
the original materials are to be found in the vicinity and the original aspect of the parts to be
reconstructed is to all intents and purposes certain.46
Availabledocumentationindicatestheyears1958–65wereofimportancetothecoastal
built heritage sites. The Department of Antiquities team embarked on surveying,
documenting, excavating and conserving the monuments at Kilwa Kisiwani. A few
renovated monuments and their respective dates in brackets included the Old Fort
(1958–61), the Small Mosque (1958–62), Makutani Palace (1958–65) and the Great
Mosque (1958–62).47
Apart from those conservation works in Kilwa, a few other
projects were implemented in Bagamoyo and Mafia. In Bagamoyo, for instance, the
team mapped Kaole ruins and produced a site plan. A building, grave, and mosque at
Kaole were renovated and fenced. This conservation work was followed by installing
a notice that provided descriptions of the site. Similarly, Mafia was surveyed and a
few built heritage sites were located and recorded, and the bushes around them were
cleared. Conservation work is also noted at Kua, where a palace in severe decay was
rescued. The antiquities team installed timber to support the palace’s roof such that
the collapsing ceiling was restored.48
Additional conservation activities were undertaken in the 1970s with the aim of
promoting Bagamoyo Historic Town as a touristic destination. For instance, in 1971,
the government of Tanzania formed a special committee and assigned it the duty to
study and make recommendations on the conservation of Bagamoyo Historic Town.49
The team was composed of heritage experts and other stakeholders from Bagamoyo.
This committee completed the tasks assigned to it and made recommendations.
Among the recommendations were declaring Bagamoyo town a ‘conservation area’
and amending the Antiquities Act. As a result, the Antiquities Act No. 10 of 1964
was amended by Act No. 22 of 1979 and by order in the Gazette, Government Notice
No. 93 of 1983, Bagamoyo was declared a ‘conservation area’.
An Amendment of the Act resulted in the repealing and replacement of eight
sections (namely section 2, 3, 6, 11, 12, 13, 19 and 26), amending three sections
(namely section 7, 14 and 25) and adding three new sections (namely sections 18A,
19A, 19B). While all amendments were critical in protecting the Tanzania’s cultural
46 URT, Annual Report of the Department of Antiquities, 1.
47 Ibid.; Chittick, Kilwa; G. S. P. Freeman-Grenville, The East African Coast: Selected Documents
from the First to the Earliest Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1975); URT, Annual
Report of the Department of Antiquities.
48 Ibid.
49 A. A. Mturi, ‘Whose Cultural Heritage? Conflicts and Contradictions in the Conservation of
Historic Structures, Towns and Rock Art in Tanzania’, in P. R. Schmidt and R. J. McIntosh, eds,
Plundering Africa’s Past (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 170–90.

57
heritage, for the purpose of this article, I will only comment on the amendments
which relate to the conservation of built heritage sites. These are sections 2, 3, 6, 19A
and 19B. With the amended section 2 of the Act, the concept ‘antiquity’ replaced
‘relic’, ‘Director of Antiquities’ replaced ‘Commissioner for National Culture’
and the new concept ‘Conservation Area’ was introduced. Replacing ‘relic’ with
‘antiquity’broadened the material remains to be protected. Replacing ‘Commissioner
for National Culture’with ‘Director of Antiquities’could be interpreted as narrowing
down political powers with a focus to professionalism. Furthermore, introducing
the concept of ‘Conservation Area’ must have aimed at employing a more holistic
approach of preserving the built heritage sites instead of a monumental framework.
With the concept of ‘monument’ instead of ‘conservation area’, the built
heritage sites located outside the ‘preferred typologies’ such as makuti50
regardless
of their utility, age, and importance seem to warrant no protection. We learn from the
literature that such a normative tendency of protecting built heritage sites based on
an examination of ‘pure cases’ presents a problem for the continued survival of built
heritage assets.51
Problems emanate from the fact that, while those assets marked
to be ‘important monuments’ enjoy protection, the remaining structures considered
‘less important’ are forsaken. As some scholars point out,52
such built heritage
conservation grounded in the identification and salvaging of ‘pure typologies’
weakens the complex, accretive and dynamic grain of stone-built towns located
along the Swahili Coast, in this case the Tanzanian coast. Furthermore, focusing
on monuments alone as Dr Ghaidan did on the Kenyan coast53
renders opaque the
origins, meanings and changing functions of monumental ruins and historic buildings,
50 Makuti are the most common residential building of the Swahili coast. They are constructed with
mud, wattle and thatched using palm leaves. For a thorough discussion of these houses refer to S.
E. Sollien, The Makuti Houses, Traditional Building Technique and Sustainable Development in
Ilha de Moçambique’ (Paris: ICOMOS, 2011) , 312–21.
51 Gospodini, A. ‘Urban Morphology and Place Identity in European Cities: Built Heritage and
Innovative Design’, Journal of Urban Design 9, 2 (2004), 225–48; B, Greenfield, ‘Marketing the
Past: Historic Preservation in Providence, Rhode Island’, in M. Page and R. Mason, eds, Giving
Preservation a History: Histories of Historic Preservation (New York: Routledge, 2004), 163–84.
52 J. Heathcott,‘Historic Urban Landscapes of the Swahili Coast: New Frameworks for Conservation’,
in R. van Oers and S. Haraguchi, eds, Swahili Urban Historic Landscape: Report on the Historic
Urban Landscape Workshops and Field Activities on the Swahili Coast in East Africa 2011–
2012 (Paris: UNESCO, 2013), 20–39; J. Heathcott, ‘Heritage in the Dynamic City: The Politics
and Practice of Urban Conservation on the Swahili Coast’, International Journal of Urban
and Regional Research, 37, 1 (2012), 215–237; W. Bissel, ‘Camera Zanzibar’, Public Culture
11, 1 (1999), 210–21.; M. Boyer, The City of Collective Memory: Its Historical Imagery and
Architectural Entertainments, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998); P. Ricoeur, Memory, History
and Forgetting (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003).
53 See U. Ghaidan, Lamu – a Study in Conservation: Based on Report Presented to the Director of
Physical Planning, Ministry of Lands and Settlement and the Director of the National Museums
of Kenya (Nairobi: East African Literature Bureau, 1976).

58
substituting broad taxonomic categories for revelatory descriptions.54
Consequently,
conservation efforts contain instabilities surrounding the ruling elite’s Arabic origin
myths (Hamitic myths), the racial foundations of oppression, religious tensions and
the legacies of slavery.55
Therefore, repealing and replacing section 2 to introduce
the concept of ‘conservation area’ was an important step in the history of conserving
built heritage sites of the Tanzanian coast.
Whereas sections 3 and 6 of the 1964 Act altogether gave power to the minister
responsible for antiquities to declare places, sites or structures of historical interest
to be monuments, they did not give power to acquire land. To resolve this problem,
sections 3 and 6 of the amendment Act of 1979 allow the minister responsible
for antiquities first to declare places, sites or structures of historical interest to be
monuments or conservation areas and, second, in consultations with the minister
responsible for lands, to acquire the area or land in accordance with the Land
Acquisition Act of 1967.
Section 19 of the 1964 Act mentions the requirement of having an ‘Advisory
Council for Antiquities’ but without stating the functions of such council. The
added section 19A of the 1979 amendment Act lists the functions of the advisory
council established by the minister responsible for antiquities. With regard to the
conservation of built heritage sites, the said advisory council is expected to: a) assist
the government in formulation and implementation of policy statements; b) advise
the government on the method of co-ordinating and monitoring research alongside
training of local personnel in scientific and technical fields related to conservation
of built heritage sites; and c) advise the government on the techniques of conserving
monuments and historic buildings including the establishment of an experimental
laboratory. In addition to listing functions of the advisory council, the 1979
amendment Act established the ‘National Fund for Antiquities’ in which all monies
to facilitate works of antiquities were to be deposited and/or were to come from.
However, despite the above discussed legal efforts to ensure conservation of built
heritage sites, lack of experts in the field remained a challenge. In response to this
challenge, in the late 1970s, the government of Tanzania requested technical support
from UNESCO. The requested support was mainly to do with the establishment of a
centrefortrainingconservatorsandrestorers.Additionally,theTanzaniangovernment
emphasised that the centre would serve the whole East African region and help to
solve the acute problem of lack of conservation and restoration technicians. The
application proposed that the centre be located in Bagamoyo, a town with historic
buildings and monumental ruins that could offer hands-on training in conservation
and restoration. UNESCO accepted, and commissioned a consultant to advise on the
initiative. The consultant’s assignment had three objectives: to visit Tanzania and
54 Heathcott, ‘Historic Urban Landscapes of the Swahili Coast’.
55 For example, see N.H, Chittick, Manda: Excavations at an Island Port on the Kenya Coast:
Memoir 9 (Nairobi: British Institute in Eastern Africa, 1984).

59
survey the environments that could support the establishment of a centre which would
finally produce specialists in monument conservation and restoration; to prepare the
appropriate curriculum and implementation timetable therein; and, finally, to work
out the financial estimates on both short- and long-term basis.56
The consultant, John Russel, visited the coastal sites with the view to determine
where the proposed training centre could be located. The visited and surveyed sites
included Dar es Salaam, Kunduchi, Bagamoyo, Kaole, Kilwa Kisiwani, and Songo
Mnara. Other sites were Kilwa Kivinje, Mikindani, Amboni Caves, Tongoni, and
Tanga. After all these visits, and based on criteria known to himself (and probably a
few of his hosts in the government), the consultant recommended Bagamoyo as the
site of the centre well. The consultant supported both proposals: establishing a centre
at Bagamoyo and using the former fortress and prison building for the proposed
centre. He remarked:
The proposed Bagamoyo Centre is situated 68 km north-east of Dar es Salaam. The building
chosen to house the proposed Bagamoyo Centre, a former fortress and prison, located at the
southern edge of the settlement, is currently in use as a police station. However, once the new
police station, which is located nearby, is completed, it is anticipated that the building will
be vacated and the ownership transferred to the Ministry of National Culture and Youth.57
Regarding the teaching curriculum and programme timetable, the consultant used a
typology for training conservation specialists developed by Paul Philliport (1974)
to propose that eight courses be offered in approximately one year. The courses
included: the elementary history of building technology, elementary theory of
conservation and restoration, elementary technical documentation, and elementary
techniques of intervention. With the exception of elementary techniques for
intervention which required 140 contact hours, the rest of the courses were only 35
hours each. The readings which were considered important for the expected students
were also listed in the consultant’s report. Furthermore, the consultant estimated the
costs required to establish and run the centre for the first five years to be $ 936,000
only, covering development and normal running costs. The annual cost breakdown
for this amount were 180,000; 171,000; 195,000; 195,000 and 195,000 for five years
respectively from 1981–5. UNESCO and ICCROM accepted the consultant’s report
and recommended the establishment of the East Africa Centre for Conservation
and Restoration of Cultural Property. The centre received students from regional
countries including Kenya, Mozambique, Madagascar and Somalia.
In support of the centre and to sustain it, ICCROM came up with a ‘charter’
on the East Africa Centre for Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property.
The charter had 7 articles whose issues of concern included definitions, aims,
56 J. Russel, Proposed Centre for the Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Property at
Bagamoyo: UNESCO Restricted Technical Report RP/1979-80/4/7.6/04 (Paris: UNESCO, 1980).
57 Ibid., 19.

60
membership, centre organisation, legal and financial issues and final provisions,
respectively. Although the charter aimed at making sure that the centre continue to
operate and train experts of built heritage conservation, it ceased operating sometime
in the mid-1990s. Although no records indicate why the centre ceased to function, it
is a possibility that Tanzania failed to fund it. Such financial crisis including lacking
the money to sponsor students resulted in the centre’s closure and the turning of the
building from which the centre operated into a touristic attraction.
Apart from the historic town of Bagamoyo, strategies to conserve the built
heritage sites of the rest of Tanzania continued during the 1980s. One of the major
successes was the nomination of the Ruins of Kilwa Kisiwani and Ruins of Songo
Mnara as a World Heritage Site. Reflecting the significance of these ruins and the
fact that the sites provide exceptional architectural, archaeological and documentary
evidence for the growth of Swahili culture and commerce along the East African
coast from the ninth to the nineteenth centuries, the nomination was accepted and
the site was added to the World Heritage List in 1981. Having Kilwa on the World
Heritage List attracted more funding, leading to more conservation activities in both
Kilwa and Bagamoyo. Although each project implemented had its own specific
objectives, they actually overlapped. All projects aimed to conserve historic data and
reduce the risk of physical damage so as to ensure the structure’s durability. They
also aimed to establish a balance between the built heritage sites and the surrounding
environments and to organise the contemporary usage of the sites to give them (the
sites) didactic dimensions.
In Bagamoyo, the conservation initiatives included: the Five Year Development
Plan of 1981–6, the Bagamoyo Stone Town Conservation and Development Plan of
1988, the Plan of Action for the Bagamoyo Conservation Programme, the Plan of
Action of 1991–94 and the Historic Building Rehabilitation Project of 1998–2002.
The Five Year Development Plan of 1981–6 surveyed, recorded and documented
various buildings and developed a conservation plan. The project also renovated
two buildings: Nasser Velji located along the Indian street and the Block House.
The Plan of Action of 1991–4, funded by the Cultural Programme of the European
Union, rehabilitated the Old Fort and partly repaired the German Boma. The Historic
Building Rehabilitation Project of 1998–2002 rehabilitated seven buildings: the
German Boma, the Old Post Office, the Tea House, the Old Market, the Caravanserai
and the Liku/Datoo Building. The projects were jointly funded by the government of
Tanzania and international agencies including NORAD, SIDA, the Ford Foundation
and the Swedish Embassy. Projects for the conservation of built heritage sites in
Kilwa Kisiwani and Songo Mnara included: the Conservation and Development
Plan of 2001, the Rehabilitation and Promotion of Kilwa Kisiwani and Songo
Mnara (2002–5) and the Management Plan for Kilwa Kisiwani and Songo Mnara
(2004). Other projects are the Kilwa Tourism Master Plan (2005) and the Emergency

61
Conservation of Kilwa Kisiwani and Songo Mnara Endangered World Heritage Sites
of 2005–7.
The implementation of these built heritage site conservation projects went hand
in hand with conferences, workshops and stakeholders meetings. For instance, Ardhi
University organised a workshop conducted at the Courtyard Hotel, Dar es Salaam on
the 13th of July, 2001. The workshop’s theme was ‘Planning Workshop on the Past,
Present and Future of Bagamoyo Town: Towards an International Heritage Site’. It
was attended by 32 participants who came from universities, NGOs, government
departments, media, officials from Bagamoyo District, and representatives from the
Norwegian Embassy and UNESCO. This was a preparatory workshop from which
an international conference would be organised to deliberate on the nomination
of Bagamoyo as a World Heritage Site. Specifically, the workshop wished to
brainstorm on the modalities of conducting an international conference, generate
the conference’s themes, and define and agree upon conference expected outputs. It
also aimed to prepare a plan of action and propose modalities to identify conference
resource persons and establish a task force and secretariat to plan and organize an
international conference.
From the ongoing discussion, it is clear that the protection of built heritage sites
along the coast of Tanzania and particularly in Bagamoyo Historic Town gained
momentum beginning in the late 1990s. Three reasons are attributed to this increase
in conservation efforts. First, from the late 1990s and early 2000s there was much
interest in documenting, protecting and commemorating slave trade and its abolition.
For instance, the international community through UNESCO’s executive board at its
twenty-ninth session held in Paris from the 21st of October to the 12th November,
1997, adopted resolution 29 C/40. Among other things, this resolution declared 23rd
August each year an ‘International Day for Remembrance of the Slave Trade and
its Abolition’. It was from this resolution that using circular CL/3494 of the 29th of
July 1998, the UNESCO Director-General requested Ministers of Culture of all the
member states to mobilise their educational, scientific, and cultural communities,
youths and the general public to organise events to mark that day (23rd August each
year). Tanzania as a member state of UNESCO and one of the credential committee
members for the twenty-ninth session adhered to this call by initiating strategies to
protect and conserve Bagamoyo due to the role it played in the slave trade of the
nineteenth century.58
Second, since the late 1990s, the government of Tanzania has been
opportunistically investing in activities to promote the economy and livelihood
of the Tanzanian people, essentially activities geared to alleviate poverty. Among
other efforts, the poverty alleviation was to be achieved through encouraging the
58 B. B. Mapunda, ‘Bagamoyo: From a Slave Port to a Tourist Destination’, Eastern Africa Journal
of Development Studies 1 (2006), 1–19; J. Henschel, 19th Century Human Merchandise: Slaves
in Bagamoyo (Dar es Salaam: DeskTop Productions Limited, 2011).

62
development of sustainable and quality tourism that is culturally and socially
acceptable, ecologically friendly, environmentally sustainable and economically
viable.59
Accordingly, having realised that the tourism industry had previously
concentrated on natural resources such as wildlife, biodiversity and beaches, the
government started to invest beyond that so as to maximise the benefits that could
be accrued from the sector. To achieve these ambitions, the government focused
on the need to identify, document, preserve and better manage the country’s rich
cultural heritage as touristic attractions. For instance, one of the policy strategies
for enhancing, developing and promoting cultural tourism was to encourage visits
to museums, monuments, archaeological, paleontological and other historical sites.
It was therefore through the strategies to develop cultural tourism that the need
to conserve, protect and promote built heritage sites and historic towns such as
Bagamoyo for touristic purposes became inevitable beginning in the late 1990s.
Third, beginning in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the country began to have
local conservation professionals graduate from both internal and foreign academic
institutions. These newly qualified professionals joined the archaeology programme
at the University of Dar es Salaam, the National Museum of Tanzania and the
Department of Antiquities, which altogether lacked expertise. The experts embarked
on conserving Tanzania’s cultural heritage, including built heritage sites. This desire
to conserve the sites emanated from perceptions that Tanzania’s cultural heritage
is underdeveloped, mismanaged, underutilised and mishandled, the majority being
in a very dilapidated state.60
It was against this background that the institutions and
experts cooperated with one another to research aspects that remained problematic.
The collaboration between the Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies of
the University of Dar es Salaam and the Department of Antiquities of the Ministry
of Natural Resources and Tourism to excavate the caravanserai of Bagamoyo is an
example of this collaboration.61
Another cooperation effort took place in 2001 when the National Museum of
Tanzania and the Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies of the University
of Dar es Salaam jointly organised an international workshop conducted from 13 to
15 December, 2001. From across the world, the workshop brought together about
70 participants ranging from researchers, academicians, heritage administrators
and officers, policy makers and students of archaeology and cultural heritage. The
59 URT, Cultural Heritage Policy (Dar es Salaam: Government Printing Press, 2008).
60 B. B. Mapunda, ‘Destruction of Archaeological Heritage in Tanzania: The Cost of Ignorance’,
in N. Broadie, J. Doole and C. Renfrew, eds, Trade in Illicit Antiquities: The Destruction of the
World’s Archaeological Heritage (Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research,
2001), 47–55; N. Karoma, ‘The Deterioration and Destruction of Archaeological and Historical
Sites in Tanzania’, in P. R. Schmidt and R. McIntosh, eds, Plundering Africa’s Past (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1996), 191–200; Mturi, Whose Cultural Heritage.
61 F. A. Chami, E. Maro, J. Kessy, and S. Odunga, Historical Archaeology of Bagamoyo: Excavation
at the Caravan-Serai (Dar es Salaam: Dar es Salaam University Press, 2004).

63
workshop was successful with deliberations on such aspects as an in-depth analysis
of the time status of cultural heritage resources and teaching programmes in the
country, and advised on appropriate policy, rules and strategies for curriculum
formulation. A very tangible result of the workshop was a currently popular and
useful book Salvaging Tanzania’s Cultural Heritage edited by Bertram Mapunda
and Paul Msemwa.62
ConCLUsIon
This article has presented various issues pertaining to the conservation of built
heritage sites of the Swahili Coast in Tanzania. It began by briefly introducing
the built heritage sites of the region and their whereabouts. As far as this aspect
is concerned, it has been argued that the coast of Tanzania contains mosaics of
built heritage sites ranging from the pre-Swahili period running through Swahili,
Portuguese, Arabic, and Indian periods to buildings from European colonial times.
The heritage documentation processes as it has been taking place through time and
space was covered as well. Precisely, the article has argued that the built heritage
sites of the Tanzanian coast have not been systematically and comprehensively
documented. Instead, only sporadic projects concentrating on robust sites have
been implemented. Of paramount importance, this article exhorts deeper thinking
and posits that the conservation of built heritage sites in present-day Tanzania and
probably East Africa in general goes back to the fourteenth century and not the late
nineteenth century as previously argued.
ACknoWLeDgeMents
My special thanks are due to the Danish Development Agency, DANIDA for financial support
through the Building Stronger Universities (BSU) project. I am thankful to Prof. Bertram Mapunda
and Ms. Neema Clement Munisi of the University of Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), Prof. Keld Buciek
and Prof. Kristine Juul of Roskilde University (Denmark) for their support during this research.
Comments from two anonymous reviewers and the editors were very useful in improving this
article.
ReFeRenCes
Primary sources
United Republic of Tanzania (hereafter URT). Annual Report of the Department of Antiquities,
(Dar es Salaam, Government Printing Press, 1958–9).
62 B. B. Mapunda and P. Msemwa, Salvaging Tanzania’s Cultural Heritage (Dar es Salaam: Dar es
Salaam University Press, 2005).

64
URT. Antiquities Act, 1964, An Act to Provide for the Preservation and Protection of Sites and
Articles of Paleontological, Archaeological, Historical or Natural Interest and for Matters
Connected Therewith and Incidental Thereto (Dar es Salaam: Government Printer, 1964).
URT. Antiquities (Amendment) Act, 1979 (Dar es Salaam: Government Printer, 1979).
URT. Cultural Heritage Policy, (Dar es Salaam: Government Printing Press, 2008).
URT. Government Notice No. 93 (Dar es Salaam: Government Printer, 1983).
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Biginagwa, T. J. ‘Historical Archaeology of the 19th-Century Caravan Trade in Northeastern
Tanzania: A Zoo-Archaeological Perspective’ (PhD thesis, University of York, 2012).
Bissel, W., ‘Camera Zanzibar’, Public Culture 11, 1 (1999), 210–21.
Boyer, M. The City of Collective Memory: Its Historical Imagery and Architectural Entertainments
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998).
Chami, F. A. ‘Kilwa and the Swahili Towns: Reflections from an Archaeological Perspective’ in
K. Larsen, ed., Knowledge, Renewal and Religion: Repositioning and Changing Ideological
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