A
two-year project to translate, transcribe and digitalise Gambian history has
been launched by the National Centre for Arts and Culture (NCAC) since 21
September 2016.
We
cannot really commend enough the NCAC enough for such an undertaking, as this
project means that our national archival information on the history and
background of the country’s growth path will be well preserved for posterity.
Information,
especially historical facts and records, is powerful for obtaining knowledge,
understanding and the secret to the growth path of a people or society.
Therefore, such information to society must be well preserved.
It
is very essential that our historical records are properly preserved since it
is from such records that our generation (and those yet to come) would be able
to know the growth trajectory of our great nation (where we have come from) and
how to determine our development path today and for the future.
It
is said, “not to know what has been transacted in the former times is to be
always a child”.
If
we as a nation fail to properly preserve our historical records, and allow them
to phase out easily, we are certainly depriving our generation and those yet to
be born, of the knowledge of their past; hence making them to be always a
child, as well as paving the way for the nation or society to remain always in
the infancy of knowledge.
We
must, therefore, commend the NCAC and the project sponsors - Hamburg University
in Germany - for the sound and invaluable project to document and digitalise
archives of our Gambian history.
“Preserving
archives of our history is preserving the knowledge base for posterity.”
The
Point
