Tanzania gets to celebrate the 2024 African World Heritage Day at the famous Kondoa Rock Art and Historical Paintings site, in Dodoma.
Why Kondoa? Well this is because the precinct is among the seven World Heritage Sites mapped in Tanzania as declared by the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 2006.
The sites were previously also accorded the National Monuments status in 1937 by the Tanzania Antiquities Department.
Zuberi Mabie, the Conservation Officer and Head of the Kondoa Irangi Painting explained that there will be a series of spectacular events at the site to mark African World Heritage Day, with the Dodoma Regional Commissioner Rosemary Senyamule gracing the occasion.
On his part, Ally Bakari, the Director General of Town Conservation and Development Area said the event will help to unlock the tourism potential of both the Kondoa District and Dodoma Region as whole.
The Kondoa Irangi Rock-Art Sites is East Africa’s most important time travel destination boasting more than 150 natural caves or pre-historic grotto accommodations whose walls have been covered with rock paintings for over 2000 years.
Located in Kondoa District of Dodoma the two millennia old paintings have been found to have high artistic quality and are suspected to have been drawn using brush-like applications.
The Kondoa paintings feature figures of elongated people, wild and domestic animals as well as activities such as sport or game hunting, with the oldest rock-etched engravings believed to be nearly 20,000 years old.
The African World Heritage Day was proclaimed in November 2015 by the 38th session of the General Conference of UNESCO and is observed all over the continent on every fifth day of May.
It is being described to be an opportunity for people around the world, and particularly Africans, to celebrate the Continent’s irreplaceable cultural and natural heritage.
Tanzania is home to a total of Seven World Heritage Sites listed under the UNESCO Cultural and Natural categories.
The sites include the Kondoa Rock-Art Sites; Ruins of Kilwa Kisiwani and Ruins of Songo Mnara; the Stone Town of Unguja in Zanzibar; Kilimanjaro National Park, featuring Africa’s highest peak, the Selous Game Reserve, which now links to Nyerere National Park; the Serengeti National Park and Ngorongoro Conservation Area.
The Kolo rocks and ancient paintings of Irangi Hills north in Kondoa, on the way to Singida, happen to be the most accessible site of them all.
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