The meeting was opened by Ambassador Amr El-Sherbiny, Egypt’s assistant foreign minister for multilateral affairs and international security, and attended by Lazare Eloundou, director of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization's (UNESCO) World Heritage Centre, along with the permanent representatives of South Africa and Namibia to UNESCO and members of the fund’s board and executive secretariat.
Participants reviewed the fund’s work over the past six months, including its role in preparing nomination files for four African heritage sites that were added to the World Heritage List during the World Heritage Committee session in July 2025.
The board also discussed efforts that led to the removal of three African sites from the List of World Heritage in Danger, as well as training programmes that reached 160 specialists to strengthen the capacity of national heritage institutions across Africa.
According to the discussions, the fund provided financial grants to four African countries for heritage protection, research, and training, and organized two regional events in Zambia and Kenya that brought together about 450 heritage experts. The meetings resulted in the adoption of two declarations addressing world heritage and sustainable development.
On the sidelines of the session, Egypt’s foreign ministry, in coordination with the Supreme Council of Antiquities and the Egyptian Tourism Promotion Authority, organized visits for participants to the Giza Pyramids and the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM).
Several participants described the GEM as a potential model for heritage preservation efforts elsewhere on the continent.
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