The nomination file submitted by the National Centre for Arts and Culture (NCAC) on behalf of The Gambia in February 2025 for Historical ‘Georgetown’ on Janjanbureh Island to be included in UNESCO’s Network of Places of History and Memory Linked to Enslavement, has been successful.
Launched in 2024, the Network aims to support the preservation of important sites tied to the history of enslavement and the slave trade, to benefit local communities and foster a broader understanding of this history. An affiliated city-twinning program will work to establish new connections between places in the network for mutual growth.
Now, ‘Georgetown’ or Janjanbureh has joined 28 such places in the world. This means that the Island will enjoy twinning with other similar sites, and seek more support for conservation and other related community development. The ‘Kankurang’ Festival will also get a publicity
boost with this accolade.
Other places on the UNESCO list include Cape Coast Castle in Ghana; President Lincoln’s Cottage in Washington DC; Badagry in Nigeria; The International African American Museum in Charleston, USA; and Providence Island in Liberia.
Hassoum Ceesay, Director of the National Centre for Arts and Culture, said the accolade is of paramount significance to the valorization of Gambian history, and said it will enhance the role of Janjanbureh Centerfire for history, memory and emancipation, and affirmed that it took the combined work of the NCAC and other stakeholders, for this inscription to happen.
Mr. Ceesay thanked the GTBoard, the Chief of Janjangbureh, the Kankurang Festival Committee, the National Assembly Member, and the entire community of Janjanbureh for their support. He disclosed that the Bicentenary commemoration held last year helped to strengthen the nomination that the NCAC filed on behalf of The Gambia.
“We did serious archival research to unearth supporting documents like the 1823 treaty between the British and the King of Niani, ceding the Island to Queen Victoria’s agent Captain Alexander Grant for a few hundred iron bars,” Director Ceesay said; that with this accolade, and the fact that in 2015 the historical rural town of ‘Georgetown’ or Janjangbureh was nominated for the UNESCO tentative list, the Island’s built and intangible heritage must be protected from destruction so that it may become another Gambia UNESCO World Heritage Site. The UNESCO inscription citation reads: ‘‘This Island, a place of remembrance of slavery and post-slavery located on the River Gambia, was used throughout the slave trade in Senegambia to enter the interior of the land. It was first a refuge for the Maroons and then a place where ‘Liberated Africans’ (freedmen sent back to Africa after the abolition of the slave trade), settled.’
