Showing posts with label * Missing - Africa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label * Missing - Africa. Show all posts

South Sudan - Boma–Badingilo Migratory Landscape (2026)

The property comprises Boma National Park, Badingilo National Park, and the surrounding floodplain and savanna landscapes in South Sudan. Located at the interface between the Sudd wetland system and the East Sudanian Savanna, it encompasses an extensive mosaic of seasonally flooded grasslands, wetlands, floodplains, woodlands, and savannas shaped by seasonal rainfall and flood dynamics. These interconnected ecosystems sustain one of the world’s largest remaining terrestrial mammal migrations, with an estimated six million White-eared Kob, Tiang, and Mongalla Gazelle moving across a vast and largely unimpeded landscape in response to changing environmental conditions. The site also reflects important cultural, and linguistic diversity of the region with the Murle, Dinka, Nuer, Anyuak and Toposa and other ethnic groups who have been custodians of this landscape through herding, farming and fishing for centuries and even millennia. The property also supports important populations of numerous large mammal species, including Nile Lechwe, African Savanna Elephant, African Wild Dog, Lion, Leopard, Northeastern Africa Cheetah, and Beisa Oryx, as well as significant assemblages of waterbirds, raptors, and migratory bird species. Its exceptional scale, ecological connectivity, habitat diversity, and relative intactness sustain ecological and biological processes that have become increasingly rare globally.

Tunisia - Village of Sidi Bou Saïd

The property is a picturesque village perched on a promontory overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, harmoniously integrated into the cliff topography. It developed around the tomb of a Sufi master and saint, known as Sidi Bou Saïd, who lived in the 12th-13th centuries. Through its architectural fabric and urban planning in symbiosis with the natural environment, its recognisable aesthetic created by emblematic colours, and a mystic aura associated with the Sufi spirituality that permeates the site, the property brings together geomorphology, architecture, and spirituality. It has long inspired artists and continues to attract visitors seeking spiritual serenity.

Sao Tome and Prinicipe - The Roças of Sao Tome and Principe: Colonial Agricultural System and Forced Migration

The serial property comprises six geographically separate roças (Portuguese colonial agricultural plantations) located on the islands of Sao Tome and Principe: Monte Café, Agua Izé, Diogo Vaz, Sao Joao, Sundy, and Belo Monte. Together, they represent a planned colonial plantation system dedicated primarily to coffee and cocoa production, combining agricultural land, industrial infrastructure, residential areas, and social facilities within highly structured spatial layouts. The property illustrates the operation of a large-scale colonial agro-industrial system, based on forced migration and labour, from the late 19th century through the mid-20th century, to sustain global commodity production after the abolition of slavery.

Comoros - The Medinas of the Historic Sultanates of the Comoros

The serial property is composed of six historic towns which developed from urban nuclei that emerged around at least the 11th century and evolved into city-states around the 14th-15th century. They eventually became the principal urban centres of the sultanates established on the islands of the archipelago of Comoros. With a common hierarchical system of social organisation, based on matrilineal and matrilocal customs, age-group systems, and patrilineal Islamic traditions still alive today, the property showcases insular urban forms and architectural expressions that resulted from cultural exchanges related to migration and Indian Ocean trade networks, embedded in the local social, geographical, and environmental context.

Cameroon - Diy-Gid-Biy Cultural Landscape of the Mandara Mountains (2025)

"Located in the Far North Region of Cameroon, the property includes sixteen archaeological sites across seven villages. Known as Diy-Gid-Biy (meaning “Ruin of the Chief’s Residence” in the Mafa language), these dry-stone architectural structures were likely built between the 12th and 17th centuries. While their original builders remain unknown, the area has been inhabited by the Mafa people since the 15th century. The surrounding landscape features agricultural terraces, homes, tombs, places of worship, and artisan activities, reflecting a long-standing cultural and spiritual connection between the people and their environment."

Source: UNESCO World Heritage Site

Guinea-Bissau - Coastal and Marine Ecosystems of the Bijagós Archipelago – Omatí Minhô

 The property includes a continuous series of coastal and marine ecosystems, corresponding to the marine and intertidal environments of the best-preserved areas of the Bijagós Archipelago in Guinea-Bissau. The Archipelago is the only active deltaic archipelago on the African Atlantic coast and one of the few in the world. The site is home to a rich biodiversity, including endangered Green and Leatherback turtles, manatees, dolphins, and over 870,000 migratory shorebirds. It features mangroves, mudflats, and intertidal zones vital for marine life, and supports rare plant species, diverse fish populations, and bird colonies. Poilão Island is a globally important nesting site for turtles.

SIerra Leone - Gola-Tiwai Complex (2025)

This serial property includes the Gola Rainforest National Park and the Tiwai Island Wildlife Sanctuary. Part of the Greater Gola Landscape, it lies within the Upper Guinean Forest, a biodiversity hotspot. The area hosts more than 1,000 plant species (113 endemic), 55 mammals (19 globally threatened), and key species like the African Forest Elephant and Pygmy Hippopotamus. It also supports up to 448 bird species, including the endangered White-necked Rockfowl. Rich in freshwater fish, butterflies, and dragonflies, the site provides vital habitats and ecosystem services, reflecting high conservation value and ecological integrity.

Burkina Faso - Royal Court of Tiébélé

"The property is an earthen architectural complex established since the 16th century that bears testimony to the social organization and cultural values of the Kasena people. Enclosed by a protective compound wall, the Royal Court consists of a set of buildings arranged in distinct concessions separated by walls and passageways leading to ceremonial and gathering places outside the compound. Built by the men of the Royal Court, the huts are then adorned with decorations of symbolic significance by the women, who are the sole guardians of this knowledge and ensure this tradition is kept alive."

Republic of Congo - Forest Massif of Odzala-Kokoua

"This property is an excellent example, at an exceptionally large-scale, of the process of post-glacial forest recolonization of savanna ecosystems. It is therefore ecologically significant as a convergence point of multiple ecosystem types (Congolese Forest, Lower Guinean Forest and Savanna). The broad range of age classifications across the forest succession spectrum contributes to the park’s highly distinct ecology, incorporating a broad range of remarkable ecological processes. It is one of the most important strongholds for forest elephants in Central Africa, and is recognized as the park with the richest primate diversity in the region."

Source: UNESCO World Heritage


I am looking for a postcard representing this new UNESCO WHS.

Côte d'Ivoire - Sudanese style mosques in northern Côte d’Ivoire

"The eight small adobe mosques, at Tengréla, Kouto, Sorobango, Samatiguila, M’Bengué, Kong and Kaouara are characterized by protruding timbers, vertical buttresses crowned by pottery or ostrich eggs, and tapering minarets. They present an interpretation of an architectural style thought to have originated around the 14th century in the town of Djenné, then part of the Empire of Mali, which prospered from the trade in gold and salt across the Sahara to North Africa. Particularly from the 16th century, the style spread south from the desert regions into the Sudanese savannah, becoming lower and developing stouter buttresses in response to the wetter climate. The mosques are the best conserved of 20 such edifices that remain in Côte d’Ivoire, where hundreds existed early last century. The mosques’ distinctive Sudanese style, specific to the savannah region of West Africa, developed between the 17th and 19th centuries as traders and scholars spread south from the Empire of Mali, extending the trans-Saharan mercantile routes into the forest area. They present highly important testimonies to the trans-Saharan trade that facilitated the expansion of Islam and Islamic culture and reflect a fusion of Islamic and local architectural forms in a highly distinctive style that has persisted over time."

Source: UNESCO World Heritage

Missing - Gabon - Ivindo National Park

"Situated on the equator in northern Gabon the largely pristine site encompasses an area of almost 300,000 ha crossed by a network of picturesque blackwater rivers. It features rapids and waterfalls bordered by intact rainforest, which make for a landscape of great aesthetic value. The site’s aquatic habitats harbour endemic freshwater fish species, 13 of which are threatened, and at least seven species of Podostemaceae riverweeds, with probable micro-endemic aquatic flora at each waterfall. Many fish species in the property are yet to be described and parts of the site have hardly been investigated. Critically Endangered Slender-snouted Crocodiles (Mecistops cataphractus) find shelter in Ivindo National Park which also boasts biogeographically unique Caesalpinioideae old-growth forests of high conservation value, supporting, for instance, a very high diversity of butterflies alongside threatened flagship mammals and avian fauna such as the Critically Endangered Forest Elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis), Western Lowland Gorilla (Gorilla gorilla), the Endangered Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) and Grey Parrot (Psittacus erithacus) as well as the Vulnerable Grey-necked Rockfowl (Picathartes oreas), Mandrill (Mandrillus sphinx), Leopard (Panthera pardus), and African Golden Cat (Caracal aurata), and three species of Pangolin (Manidae spp.)"

Source: UNESCO World Heritage

Missing: Burkina Faso - Ancient ferrous metallurgy sites of Burkina Faso

"This property is composed of five elements located in different provinces of the country. It includes about fifteen standing, natural-draught furnaces, several other furnace structures, mines and traces of dwellings. Douroula, which dates back to the 8th century BCE, is the oldest evidence of the development of iron production found in Burkina Faso. The other components of the property - Tiwêga, Yamané, Kindibo and Békuy - illustrate the intensification of iron production during the second millennium CE. Even though iron ore reduction - obtaining iron from ore - is no longer practiced today, village blacksmiths still play a major role in supplying tools, while taking part in various rituals."

Source: UNESCO World Heritage 

I am looking for a postcard this UNESCO WHS inscribed in 2019.

MIssing - South Africa - ǂKhomani Cultural Landscape

"The ǂKhomani Cultural Landscape is located at the border with Botswana and Namibia in the northern part of the country, coinciding with the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park (KGNP). The large expanse of sand contains evidence of human occupation from the Stone Age to the present and is associated with the culture of the formally nomade ǂKhomani San people and the strategies that allowed them to adapt to harsh desert conditions. They developed a specific ethnobotanical knowledge, cultural practices and a worldview related to the geographical features of their environment. The ǂKhomani Cultural Landscape bears testimony to the way of life that prevailed in the region and shaped the site over thousands of years."

Source: UNESCO World Heritage

Missing - Angola - Mbanza Kongo, Vestiges of the Capital of the former Kingdom of Kongo

"The town of Mbanza Kongo, located on a plateau at an altitude of 570 metres, was the political and spiritual capital of the Kingdom of Kongo, one of the largest constituted states in Southern Africa from the 14th to 19thcenturies. The historical area grew around the royal residence, the customary court and the holy tree, as well as the royal funeral places. When the Portuguese arrived in the 15th century they added stone buildings constructed in accordance with European methods to the existing urban conurbation built in local materials. Mbanza Kongo illustrates, more than anywhere in sub-Saharan Africa, the profound changes caused by the introduction of Christianity and the arrival of the Portuguese into Central Africa."

Source: UNESCO World Heritage

Missing - Cameroon - Dja Faunal Reserve

"This is one of the largest and best-protected rainforests in Africa, with 90% of its area left undisturbed. Almost completely surrounded by the Dja River, which forms a natural boundary, the reserve is especially noted for its biodiversity and a wide variety of primates. It contains 107 mammal species, five of which are threatened." 

Source: UNESCO World Heritage

I am looking for a postcard for this UNESCO site.

Missing - Central African Republic - Manovo-Gounda St Floris National Park

"The importance of this park derives from its wealth of flora and fauna. Its vast savannahs are home to a wide variety of species: black rhinoceroses, elephants, cheetahs, leopards, wild dogs, red-fronted gazelles and buffalo, while various types of waterfowl are to be found in the northern floodplains." 

Source: UNESCO World Heritage

I am looking for a postcard this UNESCO site.

Missing - Cote d'Ivoire - Comoé National Park

"One of the largest protected areas in West Africa, this park is characterized by its great plant diversity. Due to the presence of the Comoé river, it contains plants which are normally only found much farther south, such as shrub savannahs and patches of thick rainforest." Source: UNESCO World Heritage

Missing - Cote d'Ivoire - Taï National Park

"This park is one of the last major remnants of the primary tropical forest of West Africa. Its rich natural flora, and threatened mammal species such as the pygmy hippopotamus and 11 species of monkeys, are of great scientific interest." Source: UNESCO World Heritage

Missing - DR Congo - Okapi Wildlife Reserve

"The Okapi Wildlife Reserve occupies about one-fifth of the Ituri forest in the north-east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Congo river basin, of which the reserve and forest are a part, is one of the largest drainage systems in Africa. The reserve contains threatened species of primates and birds and about 5,000 of the estimated 30,000 okapi surviving in the wild. It also has some dramatic scenery, including waterfalls on the Ituri and Epulu rivers. The reserve is inhabited by traditional nomadic pygmy Mbuti and Efe hunters." 

Source: UNESCO World Heritage

Missing - Egypt - Abu Mena

"The church, baptistry, basilicas, public buildings, streets, monasteries, houses and workshops in this early Christian holy city were built over the tomb of the martyr Menas of Alexandria, who died in A.D. 296." Source: UNESCO World Heritage