Afrikan History Theme Park

[Kushnology]

Multi-Million Dollar African History Theme Park Being Developed In Abuja, Nigeria
released on 05/23/06 at 22:10:39

Abuja, Nigeria (emergingminds.org) - Tourism in Africa and particularly in Nigeria is about to get a boost with the construction of an African History Theme Park in the Nigerian capital, Abuja.

Heritage City otherwise known as the African Kingdoms and Empires Theme Parks and Resorts is designed to showcase Africa's rich history, enhanced with modern technology to produce a total experience in learning, entertainment and relaxation for tourists and visitors.

According to project planners--U.S.-Africa Technology Council, Inc based in Washington DC--the Heritage City Theme Park Project represents the best initiative to date to present all of Africa's diverse culture and history to tourists and visitors in one spot. That spot is a 15,000 acre site on the outskirts of Nigeria's Federal Capital City, Abuja, which has been earmarked by Nigerian authorities for the project and for other tourism related developments such as a wildlife park and safari, hotels, vacation homes, retail and movie theaters.

The park will feature the normal rides plus re-creations of ancient African Kingdoms and Empires such as Oyo, Egypt, Songhai, Nubia, Ashanti, Kanem Borno and the Kings and Queens who presided over them such as Queen Nefertiti, King Jaja of Opobo, Queen Amina, the great Zulu warrior, Shaka Zulu among others.

The project will also bring to life themes from African movies, festivals, legends and folklore. A preview of the master plan reveals for example, the Yemaya Water Park named after the ancient Yoruba legendary figure and the Iri-Ji Amphitheater whose design incorporates themes based on the New Yam Festival celebrated by the Igbos of eastern Nigeria.

There will be monuments honoring the heroes of the African Independence struggle and a showcase featuring scientific discoveries of the origins of human life in Africa.

The project is being financed jointly by Heritage City Parks Ltd, a Nigerian-based development company, and a consortium of international investors. The first phase of the theme park is expected to be complete in 2007. Well-known sources familiar with the project master plan describe it as bold and imaginative and could further impact the growth of tourism in the West-African sub-region.

www.africanheritagecity.com

[Mtangulizi]

something sounds fishy about this. The website details make the project sound so artificial and almost counter-revolutionary and un-Afrikan. I saw pictures of roller-coasters. We don't need no roller-coasters in Nigeria. How you gonna install roller-coasters in a country where people are dying every day? Nigeria is in the same shit as the Congo. Millions of poor people fighting and dying all the time and getting sick and starving and malnurished and their environment devastated and an uncle-tom government allowing neocolonialism and neoliberalism and death as the supreme dictatorship.

Is white money behind this? It's usually in the interest of whites to put our accomplishments and the high water marks of our civilization and struggle soundly and solely in the past. While it is indeed history, I'm about living the legacy of Kemit and ancient Benin and Congo and Dahomey right now. I'm trying to build the new civilization from Afrikan roots and burn this white capitalist neoliberal "global" pillaging civilization to a crisp. The nature of this showcase acts like the old glories are said and done and now it's time to live like white folk and commodify history. Because the gist of it all is so resoundingly bourgeois seeming and unspiritual and commercial.

It will probly be heavily guarded when it is complete by corrupt nigerian police and only a tiny tiny minority of the people will ever see it, being limited to tourists of means and ultra-bourgie nigerians only.

Look at the plans- see how much parking space there is. Looks like something off a Jersey highway. I wonder what kind of real history is being erased by the paving over of whatever village or community used to be there to build this sort of "African-centered" Disney-Land.

You can't honor our ancestors like that (the 6-Flags way). You have to build shrines with corresponding real libraries and teachers that pass it down and practice the ways of old.

Urban Afrika is kinda boring, too many Afropean capitalists in those places.

[Exzit]

this sounds to me to be a way for yt to introduce biometric scanners in Afrika. I know they are doing it in the u.s. via seaworld and disneyworld in order for people to enter the parks, and since they don't have a disneyworld in Afrika...well you can do the math