Heritage and digital: what prospects for 2035?

What will Cameroonian heritage look like in 2035? Three dynamics are emerging. First, restitution: the return of emblematic works, such as the Bamun mandu yenu statue, raises the question of tomorrow's African museums and of where memory should live.

Second, digitisation: colonial archives, oral traditions, endangered local languages — the race is on to document before the last knowledge-holders pass away. Artificial intelligence and community databases are becoming tools of preservation as much as transmission.

Finally, sustainable cultural tourism: rather than mass tourism, Cameroon can bet on community circuits where revenue directly irrigates chiefdoms, guides and artisans. Heritage is no longer just a legacy to protect: it is a creative economy to invent — and every contribution to collaborative platforms is already sketching its contours.

Other tasks will open up: training a new generation of African curators, historians and guides; legal frameworks to protect creations and traditional knowledge; and economic models in which culture becomes a source of jobs for the youth rather than a mere object of contemplation.

Finally, the horizon is pan-African. The borders inherited from colonisation cut through peoples and stories that once spoke to one another. Reconstituting memory on a continental scale — linking kingdoms, languages and trade routes across borders — may be the finest promise of digital tools in the service of heritage.