Cabinet Secretary Moses Kuria of Public Service, Performance, and Delivery Management has announced that Kenya will seek to commercialize its traditions and culture to derive financial benefits from it.
During his address at the Bomas of Kenya on Utamaduni Day, Cabinet Secretary Moses Kuria mentioned that Kenya is now safeguarded by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) 1970 treaty.
Kenya is now among 39 African countries under the treaty, which aims to combat the illegal trade of cultural artifacts 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 underscored the importance of harnessing the knowledge of the elderly and the wisdom passed down from ancestors to address present-day challenges. He urged Kenyans to engage in profound introspection, contemplating “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,” Kuria declared.
He further posed: “How many of the things that we are doing today are at variance with how our founders and our ancestors were doing things?”
“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.” Said CS Kuria.
