Project to support the modernisation of the National Museum of Yaoundé

The Cameroonian Ministry of Arts and Culture has developed an ambitious museum policy. The strategy involves developing the National Museum of Yaoundé as a showcase of national cultural diversity and turning it into the reference centre in Cameroon and more generally across West Africa.

This is how the project to support the modernisation of the National Museum of Yaoundé came about. It is funded by Agence Française de Développement (AFD) via a Debt Reduction-Development Contract and implemented by Expertise France, in partnership with the French Ministry of Culture. This €600k technical assistance programme has been built jointly with the partners and provides for consultancy missions, training, field schools and study tours. It marks another milestone in the long tradition of Franco-Cameroonian exchanges in the cultural field.

The methodology for Expertise France’s operations under this technical assistance project is based on four areas:

1. Modernising the museum’s governance (organisation chart, communication policy, etc.);
2. Developing the collections and reorganising the reserves (inventory, preventive and curative conservation, etc.);
3. Developing a structural scientific and cultural policy (scientific and cultural project, policy for the public, etc.);
4. Arranging spaces (museographical and architectural pre-programming which could be realised providing that an additional budget is granted to finance works and equipment purchase).

The technical assistance programme mobilises experts from the Ministry of Culture, its operators and network to implement the activities, working closely with the Cameroonian partners. The project team also relies on expertise from the Arc’Antique laboratory of the Loire-Atlantique French Department, the Ecole du Louvre, Universcience, the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac Museum as well as on private expertise in the field of space programming for example.

The signing of contract in late August 2020 marked the start of the activities, remotely in view of the sanitary context. Since July 2021, missions have been organized around the first three areas of operation. The travel of several experts, with institutional and technical support of Expertise France and the Ministry of Culture, has contributed to the following progress:

• Regarding the modernization of the museum's governance, interviews with the museum's staff and management allowed to define a tangible framework of organization and operation for the museum by specifying the positions of each person and the decision-making, steering and structuring processes. A training plan was proposed in order to empower and operationalize employees in their future positions.
• On the management of collections and reserves, a practical training in preventive conservation of collections has been provided. An in-depth analysis was carried out to draw up  a very detailed report on the activities to be carried out in order to modernize this management (inventory, plans for future development of the reserves, curative conservation plan...)
• Finally, a draft of scientific and cultural policy was created. It is a highly strategic document for the development and modernization of the museum. In addition, progress has been made in order to support the creation of the museum's scientific council, and its composition has been defined

These activities will be developed in the coming year. Certain actions now appear to be priorities:

• The fumigation of the collections in storage and the treatment of the storerooms
• The review and validation by the museum's management of the proposed scientific and cultural policy which will be the backbone of the museum's development and modernization strategy
• The launching of activities related to the design of spaces
• The empowerment and operationalization of the organizational chart by the museum teams
• The appropriation by the museum staff and management of the elements and tools set up since the beginning of the project.