About the Institute

Ethiopia has a rich, vast and diverse cultural heritage that expresses its prolonged history, unique experience, cultural diversity and wealth existing in the country. However, most of them are found in terrible conditions of conservation and management due to various reasons. They have been disastrously collapsing and their destruction is brought about a harmful loss to humanity as such treasures represent unique and irreplaceable properties of great value. The damage is the major obstacle for Ethiopia to get adequate benefit and opportunity from such precious and unique treasures.

Most of Ethiopian cultural heritages, which are non-renewable, are highly vulnerable and are constantly threatened by the ravages of nature and humans. The absence of locally produced professionals has contributed to the damage of our treasures. The impact of the absence of skilled heritage professionals goes to the extent that many of our cultural and historical objects have been damaging because of un-wise (non-professional) conservation work, and primitive ways of handling and negligence. A range of professionally led strategies or interventions needs to be designed to extend the life span of those treasures and to prevent or lessen their deterioration by safeguarding them from further decay and deterioration. It is through professional conservation and management that the authenticity, integrity and values of the heritage can be maintained, protected and utilized by the current and future generations.

Though cultural heritage deterioration is a continuous and natural process, it can be slowed and indeed, there are ways in which their natural lifespan can be extended. This can be obviously possible if there are professionally trained human resources in the sector. Since historic and cultural heritages are irreversible and irreplaceable resources, responsibility for conservation should be entrusted to professionals who have undergone due training. However, the availability of trained experts in heritage conservation and management are still a matter of concern in Ethiopia. There is a big gap of qualified specialists in the country who can ensure the conservation, management and sustainable use of those historic and cultural treasures. This indicates the pressing need to develop, maintain and regularly update a pool of practically trained and skilled conservators that should be engaged in and exposed to a variety of conservation activities.

Though since very recently cultural heritage education has started to be delivered in some of Ethiopian universities, there are several gaps and as a result the trained human resource in those higher institutions on heritage conservation and management is not compatible to the demand of the country. The main reason is that the training is theoretically oriented and weak in practical aspects. The balance between theory and practice is not properly maintained both in the curriculum and the process of teaching. This unbalance is mainly because of the absence of practically trained teachers and lack of adequate and well-equipped teaching facilities such as laboratories, studios, workshops, field work equipment and so on. The training gaps have also made job opportunity a challenge for university graduates.

This lays the rationale for the establishment of practically oriented heritage institute. To fill the gaps mentioned above and to have a permanent solution for the already stated problems, setting up a capacity building center or an institute at an advanced level exclusively committed to heritage conservation and management is indispensable. This can be achieved through the collaboration with universities abroad who have accumulated experiences in heritage conservation and management education. The already started collaboration between Woldia University and the Swedish Gutenberg University to work on the foundation of heritage conservation campus in Lalibela and the ongoing Ethio-French heritage conservation project will be the main assets to materialize the envisaged plan of establishing the Institute. In doing so, the institute began its work since 2013 EC/ 2021 GC

The main objective of opening the institute is to produce cultural heritage managers and conservators who have the knowledge; skills, experience and understanding to act through an advanced level practically oriented training. It is also aimed to be the main capacity building center in Ethiopia where local people can be trained in order to fill the gap of professionals who are well equipped with practical skills of conservation and management. Moreover, the training is designed to make graduates competent to the labor market so that they can secure job opportunities. To meet those objects, the training will be given at masters and post graduate diploma levels in heritage conservation, heritage management, archaeological science, museology and cultural heritage tourism management. The courses in each of the programs are designed to foster the conservation and management of the Ethiopian cultural heritage.

The institute has maintained partnership since the time of its inauguration internally with the city administration of Lalibela town and internationally with Lalibela Sustainable Project (CFEE). As part of the partnership we have been using the building provided by the town for teaching learning and office works. Besides, Sustainable Lalibela project has granted above one million birr for 63 first batch students of ours students.