An African creative-heritage programme
Every creative work has a story.
Some stories are well documented. For many African creators, they still live across families, communities, oral traditions and dispersed archives. Umurage Regenerate helps reconnect those stories so creative heritage can remain visible, protected and alive across generations.
We know how Mozart inspired Beethoven.
We know how Picasso influenced Basquiat.
For many African creators, these relationships are still carried by families, artists and communities — but rarely connected in a lasting digital memory.
Umurage Regenerate helps make these stories visible, traceable and useful for future generations.
The challenge
When an artist disappears, more than the works are at risk.
Archives become dispersed
Masters, manuscripts, photographs and recordings may remain in private or fragile conditions.
Stories become harder to recover
The context, influences, collaborators and creative process may disappear with the people who remember them.
Rights remain unmanaged
Works may be reused without clear attribution, permission or payment.
Future generations lose a source of inspiration
A heritage that is archived but not transmitted gradually leaves cultural life.
The response
From scattered traces to a living creative heritage
- 01
Collect
- 02
Document
- 03
Protect
- 04
Connect
- 05
Transmit
- 06
Regenerate
Umurage Regenerate combines heritage documentation, rights management, living knowledge, professional training, creative cohorts and digital tools in one integrated programme.
Four programme effects
One programme, four lasting effects
Safeguard
Preserve works without losing their history.
- Inventory
- Digitisation
- Documentation
- Catalogues
- Living knowledge
Regenerate
Help heritage continue to inspire and create value.
- Rights
- Licences
- New interpretations
- Royalties
- Family validation
Professionalise
Build a new profession for African creative heritage.
- Competency framework
- Curriculum
- Training
- Supervised placements
- Employment
Equip
Provide the infrastructure needed to scale the model.
- Open platform
- Lineage engine
- AI-assisted documentation
- Collaboration tools
- Open methodology
Outcomes
What the first 24-month cycle will deliver
Over 24 months, the programme will:
- support four African artistic estates;
- digitize more than 1,000 works;
- document at least 500 works;
- train eight Creative Heritage Managers in Belgium;
- support the creation of twelve licensed derivative works;
- deploy an open technological platform combining AI-assisted documentation with a creative lineage engine;
- publish an open methodology that can be replicated across Africa.
Outcomes for the first 24-month programme cycle.
Why now
The people who carry this memory are still with us — but not forever.
The generation that shaped much of modern African culture is still among us. Families, collaborators, performers and communities still hold the knowledge needed to document these creative heritages. The next decade will determine how much of that knowledge can be preserved and transmitted.
- Living memory
- Recorded knowledge
- Documented heritage
- Transmission
Why Umurage Regenerate
Born from lived experience
Umurage Regenerate grew from the experience of the Kizito Mihigo Peace Foundation in preserving, organising, protecting and transmitting the creative heritage of Kizito Mihigo. That work revealed a wider gap: there is no integrated method, profession or infrastructure supporting the full lifecycle of an African creative heritage.
- Cataloguing and preservation work
- Digital distribution
- Rights regularisation
- Youth creative programmes
- Large digital communities
- Experience with artistic calls, juries and new works
Governance and trust
Entrusting is not surrendering
- Rights holders retain ownership of their heritage data.
- Families validate creative reuse.
- Living artists control how affiliations are made public.
- Participants can retrieve their data and leave the programme.
- Funders receive transparent reporting and open-book accountability.
Technology supports cultural legitimacy. It does not replace it.
Get involved
Three ways to begin
Are you an artistic estate?
Explore how Umurage Regenerate can help document, protect and transmit a creative legacy.
Discuss your heritageAre you a living artist?
Prepare your creative heritage while you can still tell its story in your own voice.
Start a preventive assessmentAre you a funder or institution?
Help build a durable African capacity for creative heritage management.
Partner with the programme