At the National Archives, a celebration of sound, image, and the power to remember
On an overcast October morning in Addis Ababa, the quiet corridors of the Ethiopian National Archives and Library Agency (NALA) hummed with the whir of old recordings and the flicker of moving images. Inside the Blatta Merse Hazen Wolde Qirqos Hall, a small crowd of archivists, artists, broadcasters, and historians gathered—bound by a shared reverence for the fragile yet enduring power of audiovisual memory.
The occasion was Ethiopia’s commemoration of the World Day for Audiovisual Heritage, an annual observance established by UNESCO to honor the images and sounds that shape humanity’s collective memory. Celebrated globally every October 27th, the day serves both as tribute and warning: history is not only written in ink, but recorded in voices, gestures, and sound.
“Audiovisual archives tell us stories about people’s lives and cultures from all over the world,” reads a UNESCO statement that guided the day’s reflection. “They represent a priceless heritage—an affirmation of our collective memory and a valuable source of knowledge, since they reflect the cultural, social, and linguistic diversity of our communities. They help us grow and comprehend the world we all share.”
In Addis Ababa, that truth resonated with particular force. The idea that a single photograph, a broadcast, or a melody could carry generations of meaning hung in the air—an unspoken theme of the gathering, where the country’s renewed efforts to preserve its audiovisual past took center stage.
The familiar saying that a picture is worth a thousand words found fresh urgency in this context. Ethiopia’s films, sound recordings, and broadcast archives are not relics of nostalgia; they are living documents of social transformation, creative endurance, and national identity.
This year’s commemoration carried special significance. It coincided with the official establishment of the Ethiopian National Committee for the Registration of Documentary Heritage, a body tasked with ensuring that the country’s audiovisual treasures are inscribed in UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register.
The committee’s mission extends far beyond cataloguing. It is about reclaiming narratives—safeguarding the collective memory contained in photographs, films, and recordings that tell the story of Ethiopian life in all its texture and complexity.
For Serse Feresebhat, Director General of NALA, the moment was both celebration and reckoning.
“Indeed, perhaps the Agency has not done as much extensive work in this area as it has in its 82 years of work in the field of manuscripts,” he admitted, speaking with measured candor. “However, the fact that we have managed to collect such rare and valuable audiovisual materials cannot be overlooked.”
He reminded the audience that while most Ethiopians associate NALA with books and manuscripts, the agency is also the custodian of the nation’s sonic and visual memory—from the rhythms of early music recordings to the first flickering reels of television drama.
Tucked away in its vaults lies a trove of vinyl records, magnetic reels, cassettes, VHS tapes, and 35mm and 16mm film. Together, they trace the nation’s artistic and social evolution—some dating back to the dawn of Ethiopian broadcasting, when the voice of an announcer or the strain of a folk tune carried the optimism of a new era.
State Minister of Culture and Sports Nebiyu Baye, who attended the commemoration, described the country’s audiovisual legacy as “truly remarkable.”
“From the German recording of Negadras Tesema Eshete onward,” he said, “we possess over a century of musical recordings that trace a living history.”
That living history encompasses not only the music of celebrated performers but also the soundscapes of ordinary life—radio dramas, public speeches, folk performances, and the first televised debates. Together, they capture the rhythm of a nation growing through song and story.
Nebiyu also reflected on Ethiopia’s early and often overlooked role in African cinema. Films such as Hirut Abatua Manew? (Whose Daughter is Hirut?), produced more than 60 years ago, stand, he noted, as expressions of modernity that predated the rise of many other African film industries.
Cinema in Ethiopia, he suggested, has always been more than entertainment—it has been a mirror of social transformation, often created amid scarcity yet rich in ambition. That Ethiopia could produce such work so early, he said, speaks to a long tradition of visual storytelling.
“Even in those early films,” Nebiyu added, “you can see the desire to document, to express, to modernize. That, too, is heritage.”
But beyond nostalgia, the day’s conversations carried a note of urgency: the need to protect and digitize these fragile records before time erases them.
For decades, Ethiopian Radio and Ethiopian Television have amassed vast repositories—roughly ninety and sixty years’ worth, respectively—of audio and visual recordings. Together, they form not only a technical archive but a spiritual one: the voices of musicians, statesmen, poets, and ordinary citizens whose lives unfolded through sound and image.
Yet preserving these archives demands resources, expertise, and institutional resolve. Magnetic tapes decay; film reels corrode; even digital files can vanish with a power surge or a forgotten password. A proposal emerged during the event: to permanently deposit the archival copies held by both broadcasters at NALA, where they could be restored and safeguarded under one national roof.
The idea resonated deeply. Centralizing the collections, many argued, would improve accessibility for students and researchers while allowing for professional restoration and long-term preservation.
Audiovisual archives, speakers emphasized, are not static relics but living resources—indispensable for education, research, and the understanding of Ethiopia’s linguistic diversity, musical evolution, and media history. For scholars tracing the shifts in Amharic broadcasting or filmmakers studying the roots of local cinema, these collections bridge the distance between past and present.
Inside NALA’s exhibition area, visitors found that bridge made tangible. A modest display of sound, video, and photographic artifacts offered intimate glimpses into the country’s creative memory.
Old vinyl records, their labels fading but still legible in looping Amharic script. A weathered reel of film, coiled in its metallic case. Black-and-white photographs of early television studios—technicians in crisp shirts, standing proudly beside bulky cameras. These were not merely relics but time capsules, holding the laughter, applause, and dialogue of another era.
And as the day’s reflections made clear, preservation is not a backward-looking act but a creative one. To restore a film, to digitize a fading broadcast, to catalogue a forgotten voice—these are acts of storytelling. They ensure that the voices which built a nation can still be heard, long after the reels stop spinning.
