(Digital) archives, memory and reconstruction in post-Genocide Rwanda (HN)

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In 1994, Rwanda suffered a Genocide of enormous proportions, and has faced huge challenges in its wake. The Genocide is the pivotal event in the recent history of Rwanda, and much of civic and political life since then has focused on the on-going process of reconstruction. A range of educational and other interventions has been made by the government to further reconciliation between perpetrators and victims and positive relations between communities. The aim is to prevent future conflict, to commemorate the dead and respect the survivors, to construct and preserve a shared memory of the event, and to create a shared identity as Rwandans. Rwanda is now on its way to creating a modern integrated society with a burgeoning economy. The Aegis Trust, a charity that works towards the prevention of genocide through education and research, has collected testimonies and other documentary material about the Genocide and post-Genocide reconstruction as the Genocide Archive of Rwanda, both as a physical archive but more particularly as a digital archive, transforming access to the material. There is a range of other significant archival holdings that if digitised and integrated would significantly increase understanding of the Genocide, and offer further opportunities for education, research, and public understanding and reconciliation. Most prominent among these is the archive of the Gacaca Courts, which were based on a traditional method of conflict resolution that was revived to deal with the problem of processing large numbers of accused. The records of these courts form an archive of 60,000,000 pages, and are of unparalleled significance as a record of the process of truth telling, justice, and reconciliation. A project is underway, supervised by a consortium including King's College London and the Aegis Trust, to digitise the documents and create an online archive, with tools and interpretive materials. These developments can play a key role in the burgeoning digital economy in Rwanda. The government is fostering a knowledge-based economy including ICT, with the aim of becoming a hub of expertise within east Africa, and digital content and asset industries form an important part in this vision. Currently, the skills and knowledge required for managing digital materials are largely lacking, and one of the aims of the Gacaca project is to build this expertise and capacity locally. These initiatives do however pose fundamental questions about the role and nature of digital archives in Rwanda. The Network will draw upon two areas of research in the digital humanities. The first will explore the role of (digital) archives in transitional justice, the construction of cultural memory, and the impact and potentially transformative effect of mass digitisation. This will provoke an examination of the implications of creating digital archives of records of the Genocide, and of potential uses of the materials, and enable the establishment of policies and processes specific to the Rwandan context. The second will address the infrastructural aspects of digital archives: what forms of archival structures are appropriate and sustainable in the cultural context of Rwanda, and what might their relationship be to the growing digital economy? We will explore these two themes in two internationally and interdisciplinary conferences in Rwanda and the UK, and as a result we will make specific recommendations for next steps in which the theoretical, practical and pedagogical aspects of the Network's research around digital archives can contribute to social, cultural or economic development in Rwanda, and also build new international collaborations that can take these forward. In particular, we will develop a roadmap for capacity building in digital content technologies in Rwanda, in collaboration archive holders, higher education, and tech industries, with the ultimate objective of creating a "centre of excellence" for the region.