Before European colonial intervention, the Rwandan kingdom had a centralised political structure under the mwami, supported by local authorities and a network of chiefs. Despite this political centralisation, cultural life and knowledge were not governed exclusively from the centre. Instead, cultural transmission and regulation were actively sustained through diverse social institutions, including clans, lineage relations, oral traditions, rituals, customary practices, and mechanisms of collective responsibility. However, during the colonial era, European powers fundamentally transformed the management of African cultural heritage. By introducing external legal, administrative, and epistemological systems, colonial authorities shifted control of cultural objects, sacred sites, and archaeological spaces from local communities to colonial states and professional institutions. This process prioritised physical heritage that could be classified, documented, and housed in museums, while systematically marginalising indigenous knowledge systems and traditional stewardship. Despite limited structural reforms following independence, the modern African continent continues to navigate the lasting legacy of this colonial hangover”. Coloniality still heavily influences heritage governance structures through top-down templates. This paradigm privileges expert authority over Indigenous Local Knowledge, positioning neighboring communities as passive beneficiaries or objects of conservation rather than active partners. To decolonise this sector, heritage must be reconceptualised not as static monuments, but as a socially constructed process where societies actively negotiate identity, memory, and economic values for sustainable development. Ultimately, shifting from state-centred management to a participatory framework that respects communities as legitimate stakeholders in identifying, managing, and using heritage is essential. As this paradigm shifts, there is an urgent need to place community agency at the centre of heritage governance, development, and studies, as it explains the capacity of individuals and communities to shape decisions that affect their lives, identities, and resources. Historically, traditional conservation approaches viewed local communities merely as passive beneficiaries or custodians of heritage. Today, modern governance systems depart from this perspective, recognising them instead as active decision-makers, primary knowledge holders, rights-bearers, and essential partners in heritage conservation and development. In the context of Rwanda's decentralised framework and its adoption of participatory and collaborative models, this transition highlights a critical challenge: without genuine community agency, participatory models risk becoming merely symbolic, tokenistic opportunities for consultation in formal forums. Heritage governance becomes genuinely participatory only when communities possess both the institutional opportunities and the practical capabilities required to exercise decision-making power. True agency extends beyond consultation, encompassing substantive influence over policy formulation, implementation, and benefit-sharing. Heritage management is not the exclusive responsibility of governments, museums, archaeologists, architects, and conservation experts. Such expert-driven approaches often create conflicts because they tend to ignore Indigenous local knowledge, cultural practices, customary ownership systems, and community development needs. In a nutshell, community agency represents the practical expression of participatory heritage governance because communities possess the ability to define heritage values, identify conservation priorities, and influence governance decisions. In other words, rather than being passive recipients of government policies, communities should become co-creators of heritage governance. Such collaborative arrangements encourage trust, shared responsibility, and collective ownership of heritage resources. Authentic decolonisation and community agency must encompass substantive influence over policy formulation by ensuring communities are primary contributors rather than mere respondents to pre-drafted state documents; project implementation by empowering local structures to manage, direct, and carry out on-the-ground preservation and exhibition efforts using both modern techniques and customary stewardship methods; and, finally, equitable benefit-sharing by establishing institutional mechanisms through which the economic, social, and cultural benefits generated by sites flow back to host communities. The writer is a heritage professional with a background in philosophy and history.
