SANF 24 no 36 by Raymond Ndhlovu, SARDC
Teaching on Site is an innovative concept for a series of regional workshops in Southern Africa intended to share ideas from precolonial African urban settlements to inform policy and planning for sustainable cities today.
The first experience of this collaborative Teaching on Site took place in 2023 at Great Zimbabwe involving universities from Zimbabwe, Tanzania and South Africa, facilitated by the Southern African Research and Documentation Centre (SARDC).
The second regional workshop is hosted by the University of Dar es Salaam history department at the Kilwa World Heritage Site in Tanzania from 9 – 13 September 2024, conducted on-site at Kilwa Kisiwani and Songo Mnara islands, and in Kilwa Masoko, an old market town at the historic port.
Kilwa was an ancient port city on the Indian Ocean coast in southern Tanzania. “Masoko” means market, it is an old market town near the historic port. The old stone city of Kilwa, including Husuni Kuba (the big house) and the Great Mosque are on the nearby island of Kilwa Kisiwani.
The workshop is attended by lecturers and students from the University of Dar es Salaam, University of Pretoria, and Midlands State University in Zimbabwe, two PhD candidates studying in Germany, a representative from the National Museum and House of Culture Head Office in Dar es Salaam, the Tanzania Wildlife Management Authority as well as SARDC.
The workshop is facilitating discussions on improving the appreciation of precolonial societies and their technologies, and drawing relevant lessons as well as understanding issues of resource management, the use of space, and how that technical knowledge can inform current policy discussions and related challenges.
The discussions have noted that understanding the place of the local people, language and connections among the precolonial urban settlements in Africa is key in unlocking the current value in our historical past and heritage.
The workshops are intended to inspire the need to promote extensive research on the precolonial urban settlements such as Kilwa by Africans in order to have proper presentation of the heritage. Some participants also note that, “the story needs to represent the local people, knowledge and creativity by the Africans from an African perspective.”
The trade networks and connections of the precolonial cities such as Kilwa, Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe show the shared history of the region and help us to better understand the current efforts on regional integration and cooperation in Southern Africa.
These were capital cities of extensive functioning states based on agriculture, mining and trade with appropriate crops for the environment and rainfall patterns, extensive livestock development and products, mineral resources and mining (gold, silver, iron, copper, etc), an industrial base for smelting and value addition, and agro-processing, and trade at local, regional and global levels.
This workshop is a continuation of the successful Teaching On Site Workshop at the Great Zimbabwe Heritage Site in Zimbabwe in October 2023 with the focus to draw effective and appropriate comparative theories and practices to contribute to current policy discussions in southern and eastern Africa.
The initiative is an innovative South-South collaboration of Midlands State University in Zimbabwe; the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania; the University of Pretoria, Department of Historical and Heritage Studies, in South Africa; and SARDC’s History Institute in Zimbabwe which covers the region, supported by the Global Centre of Spatial Methods for Urban Sustainability (SMUS) at the Technical University of Berlin in Germany.
The objectives of the initiative are to strengthen the development of teaching and research skills; improve the appreciation of pre-colonial societies, and draw relevant lessons.
The concept addresses the emerging interest in exploring indigenous knowledge systems and responses in this regard across borders and regions in Africa in the pre-colonial period, with reference to various dimensions of urbanization and how to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. sardc.net
