List of World Heritage Sites in Africa


The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization has designated 145 World Heritage Sites in Africa. These sites are located in 35 countries.

Selection of World Heritage Sites

have the lead with ten sites; followed by Ethiopia, Morocco being home to nine sites; then Tunisia with eight sites; and Algeria, Egypt, Kenya, Senegal, and Tanzania at seven. Ten countries have only a single site each. Four sites are shared between two countries: Maloti-Drakensberg Park, the Mount Nimba Strict Nature Reserve, the Stone Circles of Senegambia, and the Mosi-oa-Tunya / Victoria Falls. Two sites are shared among three countries, Sangha Trinational and W-Arly-Penjari Complex.
The first sites from the continent were inscribed in 1978, when the Island of Gorée of Senegal and the Rock-Hewn Churches of Ethiopia were chosen during the list's conception.
As of September 2017, Somalia has no official World Heritage Sites since the Somali government is not party to the 1972 World Heritage Convention. However, there are around a dozen archaeological sites in the country that are believed to be potential future candidates for World Heritage status.
Each year, UNESCO's World Heritage Committee may inscribe new sites on the list, or delist sites that no longer meet the criteria. Selection is based on ten criteria: six for cultural heritage and four for natural heritage. Some sites, designated "mixed sites," represent both cultural and natural heritage. In Africa, there are 55 cultural, 44 natural, and 5 mixed sites.
Several efforts have been devoted to increasing the number of sites and preserving the heritage of existing sites on the continent; for example, on 5 May 2006, the African World Heritage Fund was launched by UNESCO to target the region of Sub-Saharan Africa. It planned to protect the sites by hiring personnel for state parties to maintain national inventories of existing sites, as well as to "prepare nomination dossiers for inscription onto the World Heritage List." Grants were also destined to help the " and management of heritage properties in general" and to rehabilitate properties in danger.
The drive was initially funded by South Africa with US$3.5 million, and, as of March 2011, has amassed $4.7 million from various countries, with an additional $4.1 million in pending pledges. UNESCO has also attempted to increase awareness of African human origin sites in Ethiopia, with a goal of conserving and protecting the areas from further deterioration.
The World Heritage Committee may also specify that a site is endangered, citing "conditions which threaten the very characteristics for which a property was inscribed on the World Heritage List." Along with other World Heritage Sites, sites in danger are subject to re-evaluation by the committee every year at their "ordinary sessions". Africa has 17 sites on the danger list, accounting for 13% of all African sites and 35% of the 48 endangered sites worldwide. The Democratic Republic of Congo and Libya both have 5 sites on the danger list, the second highest of any country in the world and two of the three countries to have more than three sites inscribed.
Sites in Africa have been marked as such for a variety of reasons, such as deforestation and hunting, civil war, threats to and hostage taking of reserve staff, oil and gas projects and mining, declines in biodiversity, and structural damage to buildings. Three sites were formerly declared as being in danger, but have since lost the status: the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, the Rwenzori Mountains National Park, and Tipasa. The Garamba National Park and Timbuktu have also lost their statuses in 1992 and 2005, respectively, but later regained it in 1996 and 2012. Despite its large number of endangered sites and the circumstances surrounding them, African World Heritage Sites have never been stripped of their title, something that has only occurred twice.

Legend

The list below ignores UNESCO's geopolitical definition of Africa and includes what it describes as sites in the "Arab States". Egypt is included as part of North Africa. The list also comprises a number of sites for which the state party is outside the continent, but the site itself is located in Africa; three such sites are located on the Canary Islands, one on Madeira, one on Réunion, and one on the Tristan da Cunha archipelago.

Sites

'''

Performance of Africa in UNESCO

The countries are divided according to their regions. Blue for Northern Africa, orange for Easthern Africa, purple for Central Africa, green for Western Africa and red for Southern Africa.

ImageSize = width:602 height:auto barincrement:15
PlotArea = top:10 bottom:30 right:50 left:20
AlignBars = early
DateFormat = yyyy
Period = from:0 till:15
TimeAxis = orientation:horizontal
ScaleMajor = unit:year increment:1 start:0
Colors =
id:canvas value:rgb
id:purple value:purple
id:red value:red
id:redl value:rgb
id:orange value:orange
id:green value:green
id:blue value:blue
Backgroundcolors = canvas:canvas
BarData =
barset:Studentenbuden
PlotData =
width:5 align:left fontsize:S shift: anchor:till
barset:Studentenbuden
from: 0 till: 7 color:blue text:"Algeria"
from: 0 till: 7 color:blue text:"Egypt"
from: 0 till: 5 color:blue text:"Libya"
from: 0 till: 9 color:blue text:"Morocco"
from: 0 till: 3 color:blue text:"Sudan"
from: 0 till: 8 color:blue text:"Tunisia"
from: 0 till: 0 color:blue text:"Western Sahara"
from: 0 till: 0 color:orange text:"Burundi"
from: 0 till: 0 color:orange text:"Comoros"
from: 0 till: 0 color:orange text:"Djibout"
from: 0 till: 1 color:orange text:"Eritrea"
from: 0 till: 9 color:orange text:"Ethiopia"
from: 0 till: 7 color:orange text:"Kenya"
from: 0 till: 3 color:orange text:"Madagascar"
from: 0 till: 2 color:orange text:"Malawi"
from: 0 till: 2 color:orange text:"Mauritius"
from: 0 till: 1 color:orange text:"Mozambique"
from: 0 till: 0 color:orange text:"Rwanda"
from: 0 till: 2 color:orange text:"Seychelles"
from: 0 till: 0 color:orange text:"Somalia"
from: 0 till: 0 color:orange text:"South Sudan"
from: 0 till: 7 color:orange text:"Tanzania"
from: 0 till: 3 color:orange text:"Uganda"
from: 0 till: 1 color:purple text:"Angola"
from: 0 till: 2 color:purple text:"Cameroon"
from: 0 till: 2 color:purple text:"Central African Republic"
from: 0 till: 2 color:purple text:"Chad"
from: 0 till: 5 color:purple text:"Democratic Republic of the Congo"
from: 0 till: 1 color:purple text:"Republic of the Congo"
from: 0 till: 0 color:purple text:"Equatorial Guinea"
from: 0 till: 1 color:purple text:"Gabon"
from: 0 till: 0 color:purple text:"São Tomé and Príncipe"
from: 0 till: 2 color:green text:"Benin"
from: 0 till: 3 color:green text:"Burkina Faso"
from: 0 till: 1 color:green text:"Cape Verde"
from: 0 till: 4 color:green text:"Ivory Coast"
from: 0 till: 2 color:green text:"Gambia"
from: 0 till: 2 color:green text:"Ghana"
from: 0 till: 1 color:green text:"Guinea"
from: 0 till: 0 color:green text:"Guinea-Bissau"
from: 0 till: 0 color:green text:"Liberia"
from: 0 till: 4 color:green text:"Mali"
from: 0 till: 2 color:green text:"Mauritania"
from: 0 till: 3 color:green text:"Niger"
from: 0 till: 2 color:green text:"Nigeria"
from: 0 till: 7 color:green text:"Senegal"
from: 0 till: 0 color:green text:"Sierra Leone"
from: 0 till: 1 color:green text:"Togo"
from: 0 till: 2 color:red text:"Botswana"
from: 0 till: 0 color:red text:"Eswatini"
from: 0 till: 1 color:red text:"Lesotho"
from: 0 till: 2 color:red text:"Namibia"
from: 0 till: 10 color:red text:"South Africa"
from: 0 till: 1 color:red text:"Zambia"
from: 0 till: 5 color:red text:"Zimbabwe"
barset:skip