The Silent Extraction: Who Owns Our Ancestral Soundtrack?

Imagine this. A visitor records a group of people performing traditional music on the banks of the Kavango River, cleans it up and licenses it for a well-funded Nat Geo Wild documentary.

They get paid thousands of dollars and come back for more recordings. Meanwhile, those who performed the music get packets of chips and cooldrink, and that is it.

Those who collectively composed and maintained the music for generations get less than nothing.

While this is hypothetical in its details, this scenario shows a pattern of cultural exploitation that has played out across Namibia and Africa as a whole for too long.

The communities that have maintained these traditions are often the last to benefit from the commercial use of their heritage, if ever.