The museum of Niamey and its environment

Abstract

The Niamey Museum is a unique and highly original institution, entirely financed—apart from the director's salary—from local resources. The open‐air museum includes a zoo and ethnographical and botanical sections and a sorcerer's tree (arbre à griots). Permanent and temporary pavilions house exhibitions which are either specialized or provide a synthesis of a given subject. A handicrafts centre sells what it produces. There are literacy classes and a cultural activities centre.It is the work of the President of the Republic of Niger, who was the creative influence behind its foundation and sees in it an instrument of national unity and popular education; of the President of the National Assembly (a historian and traditional scholar) who has guided its development; and of the local population which has paid for the museum, visits it and keeps it lively.Some European experts do not seem to understand the museum, but for the Africans it is the ideal place in which to learn, to admire and to marvel—over 300,000 visitors a year. Some of the guides may be technically illiterate but can explain the synthesis of cultures to visitors in vernacular languages. It is the last place in which urbanized citizens can find their roots again and learn about the diversity of their country.In short, the birth of a specifically African museology, working for its own people with its own resources in an institution run by a particularly understanding and inventive director. (Editors' Note.)