Public Service, Performance and Delivery Management Cabinet Secretary Moses Kuria now says Kenya will start to commercialize its traditional knowledge and benefit from it.
While speaking at the Bomas of Kenya during Utamaduni Day on Tuesday, Kuria said Kenya is now protected under the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) 1970 treaty, as signed by the Sports and Culture Committee to ensure its ratification.
Kenya joins 39 African countries that have signed the treaty seeking to combat the illegal trade of cultural artefacts by prohibiting their illicit import, export, and transfer of ownership.
“Those foreign people who have been coming here rating our artefacts, rating our emblems of heritage, our shanga, Maasai culture, we are saying now, because we are protected by international laws and conventions, that is going to be a thing of the past, “Kuria said.
“Even to photograph a Maasai now you have to pay and you pay in US dollars.”
Kuria, in his speech, reiterated the importance of tapping into the knowledge of the old and the wisdom of the ancestors to solve contemporary problems.
He called on Kenyans to deeply introspect on “where we are coming from as a nation and where we are going as a people.”
“When I look at us who were here today, we have got so many things that we can learn from our tradition and from our culture. It is time we take stock,” he continued.
“How many of the things that we are doing today are at variance with how our founders and our ancestors were doing things?”
He added: “If we just try to make a copy and paste of their system of government indeed, even as a government we are going to be very successful. Our traditional medicine, our traditional jurisprudence, the way we conducted settlement of disputes among the people. We can indeed learn a lot from that generation.”
