adminAdelaide Moyo Chronicle reporter
THE 23rd Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Branch of the International Council on Archives (ESARBICA) general conference ended on Friday in Victoria Falls with National Archives of Zimbabwe (NAZ) director Ivan Murambiwa being unanimously elected the organisation’s president.
Murambiwa who has been at the helm of NAZ for more than two decades will lead ESARBICA until 2017. He takes over from Kenyan National Archives director Francis Mwangi.
There were no other contestants as Murambiwa, who was deputising Mwangi was nominated and unanimously elected.
In his acceptance speech Murambiwa said he would work hard to implement some of the resolutions of the 23rd conference.
He said he would transform ESARBICA into a profitable organisation. “I’m not promising much but if we can achieve what has been recommended here we can have a better organisation and conference in 2017,” he said.
Murambiwa implored member states to follow a strategic plan for the organisation as he proposed annual training seminars.
The weeklong conference which was attended by more than 500 delegates from 13 countries of East and Southern Africa, was held under the theme: “Archives uses, abuses and underutilisation.”
It resolved to lobby governments to invest more in archives and records management after realising that archives and records were being under-utilised.
The conference also resolved that both creators of records and archival institutions should embrace e-record keeping to modernise the sector and increase access and visibility through the use of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs).
An expert from University of South Africa (Unisa) Patrick Ngulube implored archivists to make people realise the importance of the department.
“People don’t use archives because we as archivists don’t make them see their benefits. We’re not visible to people who end up ignoring archives,” he said.
The conference could not have come at a better time for Zimbabwe as the country has embarked on computerisation of the National Archives department.
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