Ghana’s decaying film reels, videotapes, and early television recordings aren’t just fading memories, they’re untapped economic assets that could generate revenue through tourism, education, and digital licensing. That message resonated strongly at the University of Media, Arts and Communication (UniMAC) Institute of Film and Television on October 27, 2025, as industry professionals and academics marked the World Day for Audiovisual Heritage.
Under the theme “Preserving Our Stories: Ghanaian Audiovisual Heritage in the Digital Age,” the event organized in collaboration with UNESCO shed light on a reality often overlooked in policy circles. While Ghana’s tourism sector generated a record $4.8 billion in 2024, the country’s audiovisual archives remain largely unexploited, representing what some experts described as a silent economic loss.
Each damaged tape or unpreserved film represents not only lost cultural memory but lost opportunity for monetization. The global creative economy has become one of the fastest-growing sectors, generating billions annually through film, music, photography, and digital content. Yet in Ghana, the physical decay of historical recordings continues unchecked, even as digitized archives across Africa increasingly power documentaries, heritage tourism initiatives, streaming platforms, and educational licensing deals.
Dr. Rebecca Ohene Asah, Dean of the Faculty of Digital Media and Design at UniMAC, emphasized that preservation of audiovisual materials must go hand in hand with innovation and enterprise. She announced that UniMAC Institute of Film and Television is designing a new master’s programme in digital archiving and preservation, an initiative that could create a new pool of experts skilled in digital asset management and heritage economy development.
Such efforts, when properly funded and integrated with national policy, can drive job creation, entrepreneurship, and foreign investment. Ghana’s own archives, spanning post-independence newsreels, traditional performances, and early video films, could power a new creative subsector if restored and made commercially viable.
Dr. Naazia Ibrahim, Deputy Secretary-General for Operations at the Ghana Commission for UNESCO, touched a nerve that resonates deeply with the local creative economy. “We may not lack research and data on our audiovisual legacy, but what we lack is investment and political will,” she said. Her comments highlighted how insufficient funding has left much of Ghana’s historical footage languishing in storage, even as the country positions itself as a continental leader in creative industries.
The keynote speaker, Professor Kodzo Gavua, Chair of the Ghana Heritage Committee and Council Chair at the University of Health and Allied Sciences, drew attention to the financial implications of neglect. He warned that every lost reel is equivalent to losing an intellectual property right, with potential long-term losses for the nation. Professor Gavua urged policymakers to approach heritage as a sustainable development resource, likening the archiving sector to mining except that what’s being extracted is the wealth of collective memory.
Ghana recorded 1.68 million domestic visits to tourist sites in 2024, marking a 19 percent year-on-year increase, with the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park remaining the top attraction. The hospitality sector expanded to 6,702 licensed tourism enterprises, up from 5,786 in 2023. Yet heritage tourism, which includes audiovisual content and historical storytelling, remains underutilized compared to physical sites like castles and national parks.
The event featured a film screening showcasing restored Ghanaian works from the Ghana Analogue Video Film Digitisation, Archiving and Repository Project. These restored films offered a glimpse of what revitalized audiovisual assets could mean for the creative market. Such content can be distributed to local and international platforms, screened at cultural festivals, or licensed for academic use, with each avenue translating into revenue generation, employment, and cultural diplomacy.
Participants in the open discussion titled “Digitising Memory: Challenges and Opportunities in Ghanaian Film Archiving” raised concerns about funding models, access, and sustainability. Several proposed public-private partnerships to support digitization and preservation efforts. Others called for establishing a national audiovisual fund, similar to those supporting film production, to provide grants or soft loans for archiving projects.
The proposals come at a time when Ghana’s creative arts sector already contributes to GDP through film, music, and advertising. The country is hosting the inaugural Creatives Connect Afrika Forum and Festival in November 2025, bringing together policymakers and industry leaders from all 54 African countries to unlock the potential of Africa’s creative economy, projected at 1.4 billion people.
What makes the audiovisual heritage conversation particularly urgent is the context of technological obsolescence. Audiovisual materials stored on film, tape, VHS, DVD, and older digital formats degrade or become unplayable without proper care. According to UNESCO, many such sources have already been lost due to negligence and lack of preservation efforts, with some materials deteriorating irreversibly within a decade without intervention.
For Ghana, where the creative arts sector is positioned as an engine of growth under President John Mahama’s administration, investing in audiovisual heritage could open an untapped segment of the knowledge economy. Properly managed archives could serve broadcasters, digital platforms, and research institutions while generating employment for archivists, data engineers, film restorers, and storytellers.
The economic rationale is straightforward. Ghana produced a wealth of content during the immediate post-independence era and through the video film boom of the 1980s and 1990s. This material, properly digitized and catalogued, could be licensed to streaming platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime, or African platforms seeking authentic local content. It could also support academic research, with universities and research institutions paying for access to historical footage.
Heritage tourism offers another revenue stream. Countries like South Africa have built a $9 billion tourism economy through bold branding of natural and cultural assets. Morocco attracts over 14 million visitors annually with culinary tours, historic architecture, and arts festivals. Rwanda is turning Kigali into Africa’s tech-tourism hub. Ghana, with its rich cultural heritage and Afro-diasporic appeal, has the potential to build similar value around its audiovisual legacy.
However, there are significant barriers. Storage facilities for audiovisual materials require climate control, specialized equipment, and technical expertise that Ghana currently lacks at scale. Digitization is expensive, labor-intensive, and requires sustained funding over many years. The government’s budget allocation for culture and heritage has historically been modest compared to other sectors.
Dr. Ibrahim’s point about political will speaks to a deeper challenge. Heritage preservation doesn’t produce immediate visible results like road construction or school building. Politicians often struggle to justify spending on activities whose benefits materialize over decades rather than electoral cycles. Yet the economic argument for preservation is becoming harder to ignore.
The creative economy globally is experiencing explosive growth. The streaming revolution has created insatiable demand for content, particularly authentic stories from diverse cultures. African content in particular has seen surging interest, with films like Nigeria’s “The Black Book” and South Africa’s “Blood & Water” finding international audiences. Ghana’s historical audiovisual materials could feed this demand if they’re preserved and made accessible.
UniMAC’s planned master’s programme in digital archiving represents a step toward building local capacity. The programme could train a generation of Ghanaian professionals capable of managing digital asset collections, understanding intellectual property frameworks, and developing business models for heritage monetization. Such skills are increasingly valuable as cultural institutions worldwide digitize their collections.
The event’s timing, coinciding with the World Day for Audiovisual Heritage observed annually on October 27, underscored the global nature of these challenges. UNESCO established the day in 2005 to raise awareness about preserving films, sound recordings, radio broadcasts, television programmes, and other audiovisual treasures. The date commemorates UNESCO’s 1980 Recommendation for the Safeguarding and Preservation of Moving Images.
As the event concluded, one message stood out clearly. Preserving Ghana’s audiovisual memory isn’t just a cultural duty but a business opportunity. In a digital age where data is capital, heritage has become a new currency. With the right investment and vision, Ghana’s film and audio archives can move from dusty shelves to global screens, telling the nation’s story while creating sustainable economic value.
Whether Ghana can mobilize the necessary resources remains uncertain. The gap between recognizing audiovisual heritage’s economic potential and actually funding preservation efforts is substantial. But with tourism revenue hitting record levels and the creative economy expanding, there’s growing recognition that Ghana’s historical recordings aren’t just memories worth saving, they’re assets worth monetizing.
