As Tanzania joins other countries on the continent to celebrate the African World Heritage Day 2024, the famous Kondoa Rock Art and Historical Paintings site, in Dodoma seems to carry the torch to this effect.
The Kondoa-Irangi’s historical destination is among the seven World Heritage Sites found in Tanzania.
It was awarded the coveted status by the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 2006.
But even before that, the Rock sites were accorded the National Monuments status in 1937 by the Tanzania Antiquities Department.
Now about the celebrations, Zuberi Mabie, the Conservation Officer and Head of the Kondoa Irangi Painting reveals that there are ongoing a series of spectacular events at the site to mark African World Heritage Day.
The events’ climax will be graced by the Dodoma Regional Commissioner Rosemary Senyamule gracing the occasion.
The Director General of Town Conservation and Development Area, Ally Bakari, believes that the event to mark this special heritage week, will help to unlock the tourism potential of both the Kondoa District and Dodoma Region as whole.
The Kondoa Irangi Rock-Art Sites is East Africa’s most important time travel destination boasting more than 150 natural caves or pre-historic grotto accommodations whose walls have been covered with rock paintings for over 2000 years.
Mapped within the hills found in Kondoa District of Dodoma the two millennia old paintings have been found to have high artistic quality and are suspected to have been drawn using brush-like applications.
The Kondoa paintings feature figures of elongated people, wild and domestic animals as well as activities such as sport or game hunting, with the oldest rock-etched engravings believed to be nearly 20,000 years old.
The African World Heritage Day was proclaimed in November 2015 by the 38th session of the General Conference of UNESCO and is observed all over the continent on every fifth day of May.
It is being described to be an opportunity for people around the world, and particularly Africans, to celebrate the Continent’s irreplaceable cultural and natural heritage.
Tanzania is home to a total of Seven World Heritage Sites listed under the UNESCO Cultural and Natural categories.
The sites include the Kondoa Rock-Art Sites; Ruins of Kilwa Kisiwani and Ruins of Songo Mnara; the Stone Town of Unguja in Zanzibar; Kilimanjaro National Park, featuring Africa’s highest peak, the Selous Game Reserve, which now links to Nyerere National Park; the Serengeti National Park and Ngorongoro Conservation Area.
The Kolo rocks and ancient paintings of Irangi Hills north in Kondoa happen to be the most accessible site of them all.