American People Sponsor Preservation of the Historic Bafut
Palace
Friday, July 18, 2014
 |
| The Achum House at the Bafut Palace |
The American
people, through the United States Department of State’s Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs, are sponsoring $61,400 (FCFA
30 million) in funding for a cultural preservation project to preserve the
architectural heritage of The Achum House at the Bafut Palace. Chargé d'Affaires Matthew McKeever noted,
“This program, funded through the Ambassadors’ Fund for Cultural Preservation
like others before it, demonstrates our respect for Cameroon’s unique national
heritage treasures.” The project will
employ local artisans to restore and reinforce the palace’s structure, as well
as to collect, catalogue, and display relics of the 600 year-old Bafut
Kingdom. The artisans have been trained
to maintain and rehabilitate other buildings in the palace complex. In addition, the project will fund the
publication of a royal book to document the history of the palace. The work is expected to be completed in nine
months, following an official launch planned for September 2014.
Historically,
the palace compound was the site of violent resistance to German
colonization. During the last war in
1907, the entire compound, including The Achum House, was burned. An architectural masterpiece constructed
entirely of local materials, the present Achum House was built in 1910 and is
the oldest structure of traditional origin in Cameroon. It has been restored several times since and
remains today the crown jewel of the palace complex.
The
restoration of The Achum House is one of the nine projects in Sub Saharan
Africa selected for funding through the Ambassadors Fund for Cultural
Preservation in 2014. Since its
inception in 2001, the Ambassadors’ Fund for Cultural Preservation has
supported more than 640 projects to preserve cultural heritage in 100
countries. In Cameroon, the Fund has
contributed more than $140,000 since 2005 to preserve three cultural sites.
For more information, please contact the United
States Embassy in Yaounde, Press section Tel 22 20 15 00, ext 4162 or 4273.
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