The week opened not with speeches alone, but with recorded sounds, shared memories and searching conversations about what it means to preserve music in a rapidly digitizing world. Cultural and music professionals from across East Africa gathered for a six-day Pan-African music archiving residency devoted to safeguarding the region’s sonic heritage.
Running through Saturday, the residency focuses on music documentation, digital preservation and cultural policy, bringing together practitioners engaged in archiving work from Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, Somalia and Kenya. In all, 12 participants took part in the program, which emphasizes collaboration across borders in a field often marked by scarce resources.
Titled “Preserving the Sound: A Pan-African Music Record Archiving and Heritage Residency,” the program is part of the Connect for Culture Africa (CfCA) initiative, which advocates for stronger public investment in arts, culture and heritage. CfCA is working with African governments toward a target of allocating at least one percent of national budgets to culture by 2030.
At the opening ceremony, organizers noted a striking paradox: while African music continues to gain global recognition, much of the continent’s historical and contemporary recorded output remains undocumented or at risk of disappearing. Limited infrastructure, fragmented archival systems and restricted access to digital tools, they said, have left many recordings vulnerable to loss.
The residency is designed as a response to those gaps. Over six days, participants exchanged experiences from their home countries, mapping common challenges in East Africa’s music archiving landscape and examining international models that might be adapted locally. The program combines workshops, group discussions and planning sessions aimed at developing prototypes for regional archiving systems.
Beyond technical training, the initiative also included field-based learning sessions that link archival practice with cultural production, exploring how documentation can feed back into creative and community life. Organizers say the goal is not only to preserve music, but to also foster cross border collaboration for the preservation of East African Music.
By the end of the residency, participants are expected to initiate music preservation projects in their local contexts and to join a broader Pan-African network of archivists, musicians and cultural professionals. Planned outputs include documentation materials, policy-oriented recommendations and creative content connected to music archiving and preservation.
Hosted by Selam Ethiopia in collaboration with regional and institutional partners, including national archival bodies, the residency is being tested as a pilot program. Organizers say it may be expanded to other East African countries, including Tanzania and Uganda, by 2026, drawing on lessons learned during the current training phase.
Among the 12 participants is Tabu Osusa, a Kenyan music researcher and the founder of Ketikeli Music. He said the Initiative closely aligns with his organization’s mission to research, document, develop and promote the diverse musical traditions of East Africa.
Osusa pointed to a structural gap that continues to undermine cultural preservation across the continent: the absence of national cultural repositories, particularly for music and film. In contrast to Western countries, he said, where institutional libraries safeguard artistic memory, Africa has largely relied on informal or fragmented systems.
“We don’t have these kinds of institutions in Africa,” he said. “It is time to decide how to act and to convince governments that arts and music matter. When archiving is absent, identity is weakened, and future generations are left without cultural reference points.”
Speaking during the residency’s deliberations, Osusa emphasized that the first task for participants is to clearly define the sector’s challenges and then outline practical responses. One such response, he said, would be forming a coordinated regional group capable of engaging governments and ministries of culture across East Africa.
Osusa says plans are already afoot to establish a collective to lobby governments so they understand the urgency of this issue. “We also need to confront questions of repatriation — how to bring our music and cultural materials back home.” He described the Addis Ababa residency as a potential catalyst, particularly in a continent where much historical knowledge remains oral and insufficiently documented.
The initiative reflects a growing recognition that music archives are not simply records of the past but living resources that shape cultural identity, education and Africa’s presence on the global cultural stage. In that context, Sisay Mengistu, director of programs at Selam Ethiopia, called the protection of Africa’s musical memory a core pillar of cultural identity and sustainable development.
Sisay said many East African countries face similar deficiencies in documenting and archiving artistic works. He noted that the residency is expected to support modernization and digitization efforts, while also promoting African culture internationally in ways that can generate income and stimulate sectorial growth.
“This residency creates a pathway for future generations to understand what we have,” he said, “while also helping the arts sector generate income and raise awareness of its value, especially among young people.” He added that the program offers space to examine country-specific realities, inform policy adjustments and develop long-term strategies for strengthening arts and culture.
Founded in 1997, Selam Ethiopia works to catalyze the country’s cultural sector by building sustainable foundations for the arts. Its activities span music, circus, media, literature, theater and film, while encouraging younger generations to use creative expression as a tool for active citizenship and community engagement.
Looking ahead, Sisay says the initiative aims to expand into Central and West Africa, with a particular focus on digital archiving. By building technical skills and awareness around digitization, he said, the program seeks to transform Africa’s vulnerable oral histories into permanent digital repositories.
