South Africa's Siyanda District Municipality has brought together tourism information for twelve of its communities in an attractive web site, Green Kalahari. The site's overview sections describe the region in terms of its natural features, people and economy, and individual sections for each community have summaries of local history and visitor attractions. Maps for each community and travel...
South Africa's Siyanda District Municipality has put together tourist information for 12 of its communities in an attractive web site, Green Kalahari. Overview sections describe the region's nature, people and economy while individual sections for each community capture summaries of local history and visitor attractions. Maps and travel planning information make the site a useful resource for...
Nature as local heritage in Africa, edited by Thomas J. Bassett and Marie-Christine Cormier-Salem, was published in 2007 as a special issue of the International African Institute's journal Africa. Seven articles make the point that local resource users have a significant stake in preserving and passing on knowledge about natural resources, preserving species and landscapes on their own terms....
Historic fruit crate label from the Sacramentao San Joaquin Delta
Visiting scholar Alex Westhoff has been in Maun for the past two weeks talking to people about tourism in the Okavango Delta. Alex works for the Delta Protection Commission near Sacramento, California, and is engaged in developing a plan to designate the Sacramento San Joaquin Delta as a National Heritage Area, highlighting local...
HOORC Library digtitization team member Olebogeng Suwe with Mr Cgara Leneke of Bere
HOORC's Library had a visit this week from Dr Junko Maruyama of Kyoto University's Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies. Dr Maruyama is working on livelihoods and social relationships among the San people of the Central Kalahari. You can find her 2003 study, The Impacts of Resettlement on...
Two presentations at a HOORC seminar today featured ongoing research by HOORC cultural tourism specialist Dr Susan Keitumetse and PhD candidate Phemo Kgomotso. Dr Keitumetse spoke about linking cultural and intangible heritage to tourism while Ms Kgomotso discussed how implementation of Ramsar and government policies are affecting the livelihoods of people in the Okavango Delta, with special...
HOORC's Library recently received the first 2008 issue of The Zebra's Voice, quarterly publication of the Botswana National Museum. The issue commemorates the Museum's 40th anniversary and contains articles about the Adopt-a-Monument campaign, pre-development archaeology, revitalization of the Motswedi wa Ditso cultural heritage radio programme, and local community involvement in eco- and...
Nineteen University of Botswana undergraduate students completed their work for HOORC's Winter Course this week, wrapping up their fieldwork assignments with presentations of the results of their research. This year's work included economics studies from Mbakile P. Seabe - Household attitudes and willingness to pay for the conservation of Lake Ngami, Botswana -- Kaelo Galeage - The impact of...
In
Economics,
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public health,
fisheries,
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Water Resources,
Vegetation,
Community Based Natural Resource Management,
Pollution,
Livelihoods,
Cultural Resources
Sankuyo villagers, from the Trust's web site
In a new article published in the online periodical, TourismWatch, HOORC researcher Susan Keitumetse argues that the protected area model limits local communities' opportunities to engage their cultural landscapes in tourism taking place in national parks. A study of the Sankuyo Tshwaragano Management Trust showed that that cultural tourism can...
Biodiversity and the Law, a collection of papers presented at the 2003 conference Biodiversity, Biotechnology and the Legal Protection of Traditional Knowledge and published by Earthscan in 2007, looks at how to promote global economic development and at the same time preserve local cultural and natural diversity. The book's contributors consider the effect of three major international...
Our land they took : San land rights under threat in Namibia, produced by the LEAD Project of the Legal Assistance Centre in Namibia in 2006, makes a case for change in management of traditional lands, improved government planning and communication, and better training and support for implementing and enforcing the Communal Land Reform Act in Namibia. Colour maps illustrate locations of...
The Khwe of the Okavango Panhandle : the use of veld plants for food and medicine, is the third in a series of booklets of San peoples' oral testimonies produced by the Kuru Family of Organizations. The booklet, compiled by the Letloa Trust, provides full page descriptions and colour photographs of plants found around the Okavango River, and their uses by the Khwe people. You can order the book...
HOORC researcher on Cultural Heritage Tourism, Dr Susan Keitumetse, has been specially invited to give a lecture at the University of Florida's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Center for African Studies, Department of Anthropology, Gainsville, USA. The lecture will take place on the 16th April 2008 titled: Managing Intangible Heritage for Tourism Policy Development: Okavango Delta,...
Cultural tourism in a changing world : politics, participation and (re)presentation from Channel View Publications, introduces researchers, students and practitioners to a range of debates about the political and social implications of cultural tourism. Theoretical sections provide the framework for a range of case studies of politics and policy, community participation and empowerment, and the...
Envisioning landscape : situations and standpoints in archaeology and heritage, Number 52 in the One World Archaeology series, brings together papers about the various ways landscape archaeology can be used to interpret heritage sites worldwide. HOORC cultural tourism specialist Dr. Susan Keitumetse, with Geoffrey Matlapeng and Leseka Monamo, has contributed Chapter Five: Cultural landscapes,...
UNESCO’s new database of cultural heritage laws facilitates identification and retrieval of information about the national laws of its Member States that deal with cultural heritage -- whether movable, immovable, intangible, underwater or natural. The resource aims to protect cultural heritage as a whole by combating looting, theft, illegal export and import and illicit trafficking of cultural...
The end of the first month of 2008 leads us to look at the Botswana Government's Press Agency (BOPA) review of news highlights of 2007. A selection of items relevant to Okavango region planning:
February - The African Union adopts Botswana's position on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People.
March - Some 111 former residents of the Central Kgalagadi Game Reserve...
Mutjango wu Shiyeyi = Shiyeyi writing system / by Andy Monthusi Chebanne, Mike Rodewald and Lydia Nyati-Ramahobo is a newly published orthography that aims to provide an understanding of the history of the Wayeyi people, long time inhabitants of the Okavango Delta region.
The book describes the history of writing the Shiyeyi language and how Shiyeyi should be written. A product of ten years of...
HOORC researchers Magole, Ngwenya and Mbaiwa (L to R) on Australian field trip HOORC researchers Dr Barbara Ngwenya , Innocent Magole, and Joseph Mbaiwa have just returned from the Fifth World Association for Sustainable Development (WASD) annual conference in Brisbane, Australia, where they presented papers about food security, indigenous knowledge and ecotourism in Botswana. Dr Ngwenya's...
HOORC's Library has received a visit this week from Rachel Faye Giraudo, a Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley currently conducting dissertation fieldwork at the Tsodilo Hills as a Fulbright Fellow to Botswana. Rachel is studying issues of cultural heritage, tourism, and development through the implementation of the Tsodilo Integrated Management Plan (TIMP)...
Habenaria pasmithii, discovered by Okavango researcher Pete Smith, from Kew Gardens collection, Aluka site Aluka is an international, collaborative programme that is building an online digital library of scholarly resources from and about Africa. Aluka seeks to attract high-quality scholarly content about Africa from institutions and individuals across the globe. By contributing their...
Tsodilo Hills photo from Botswana Tourism site
AllAfrica.com reports another Mmegi story: launch of a new funding mechanism for development of tourism through villages near the World Heritage Site, Tsodilo Hills. Funding for the projects will come from De Beers and Debswana's Diamond Trust for...
Mapping for change : practice, technologies and communication , CD-ROM version of number 54 in the Participatory Learning and Action series, contains multilingual PDF versions of the theme articles from the Mapping for Change International Conference on Participatory Spatial Information Management and Communication. The CD also includes other key resources (mainly in English), such as DVD...
HOORC is hosting celebrations for the University of Botswana's 25th Anniversary today. A parade is making its way from HOORC's gates to the main kgotla in Maun for speeches, singing, dancing and lunch for all villagers. The winning entry in a contest for schoolchildren explains the origins of the university:
Letsema is the spirit of giving. Batswana traditionally have always believed in...
Winter Course Student Presentations
HOORC’s 2007 class of University of Botswana Winter Course students were completing their project reports this week, following six weeks of intensive study and fieldwork in the Okavango Delta and Ngamiland. Seanokeng Kedisaletse and Boikanyo Mokgweetsi looked at different aspects of solid waste management with Solid waste management in Maun, and Household...
The web site of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) reports the 11th session of its Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore, currently underway in Geneva to discuss draft provisions for enhanced protection of traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions against misappropriation and misuse.
WIPO...
This guidebook, produced by Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC), offers ideas for improving design, delivery, monitoring and evaluation of research programmes in natural resources management through inclusion of the knowledge of local communities. Methods of incorporating indigenous knowledge systems into development work are explained, and a useful appendix includes three...
Photo courtesy of Sheila Coulson
Associate Professor Sheila Coulson of the University of Oslo's Department of Archaeology visited HOORC today and presented Early Symbolism and Ritual Behaviour: Evidence from a Middle Stone Age Site, Tsodilo Hills, Botswana, the latest findings from the work of the joint project of the Archaeological Section, UB/Tromsø Collaborative Programme for San Research....
Okavango tourist
HOORC researcher Joseph Mbaiwa, with University of Botswana Dept. of Environmental Science Professor M.B.K. Darkoh published Tourism and Environment in the Okavango Delta, Botswana in late 2006. The book aims at assessing socio-cultural, economic and environmental impacts of wildlife-based tourism industry in the Okavango Delta. Informed by the notion of sustainable tourism...