Save Nubia Project

The mission of the Save Nubia Project (SNP) is to help raise national and international awareness about the pending flooding of the central areas of the ancient Kushite and Nubian civilizations in the Sudan. There are a series of dams (from the 2nd through 5th cataracts) along the Nile completed or scheduled for construction, each of which will create a large reservoir and flood countless ancient archaeological sites and displace hundreds of thousands of people. Thus, the Save Nubia Project’s task is to document that the dam construction areas in northern and eastern Sudan are valuable World Heritage Areas that are in danger of being destroyed, and should be preserved.

The SNP campaign has three goals:

1. Conduct field research to document, record, and publish historical and archaeological evidence on the importance of the historic northern and eastern Sudan regions;
2. Present compelling documentation that this rich archaeological region should be designated a network of UNESCO World Heritage Sites at risk, which would help protect the region from large dam construction and   inundation. There are other sources of energy available in Sudan, such as solar panels, micro-hydro, and   wind turbines;
3. Assist the local Nubian people near the 2nd and 3rd cataracts to build a series of museums to help preserve their heritage.

Professor Manu Ampim
Director, Save Nubia Project

(Historian / Primary Researcher)

Professor Manu Ampim is an historian and primary (first-hand) researcher specializing in African and African American history and culture. He earned a Masters of Arts degree in History & African American Studies from Morgan State University in 1989.

Teaching Career:

He has taught in the Department of History at Morgan State University (Baltimore, MD), and at San Francisco State University in the Department of Ethnic Studies. Also, Ampim has studied at Oxford University in England, and collaborated on a NASA-sponsored research project, which examined the ancient climate and migration patterns in Africa. Currently, Prof. Ampim teaches history at Contra Costa College (San Pablo, CA), and a Africana Studies/Study Abroad course at Merritt College in Oakland, CA. He also teaches a pioneering 7-Step Primary Research Methodology Course at Advancing The Research.

Publications:

Prof. Ampim has written influential books and monographs, and also had several essays published in Egypt: Child of Africa (1994), edited by Ivan Van Sertima. Ampim’s most extensive set of essays is the seven-part critique on “The Vanishing Evidence of Classical African Civilizations.” His most influential work will be his long-awaited book, Modern Fraud (forthcoming), which is the documentation of the Ra-Hotep and Nofret statues as among the greatest forgeries in the history of ancient African archaeology.

Pioneering Field Research:

Professor Ampim has taken educational tours to North Africa and Central America. In addition, he conducted an extensive 13-country research tour to all of the major museums, institutes and libraries throughout America, Europe and Canada, which house ancient Egyptian, Nubian, and Kushite artifacts. Since the 1990s, he has completed various field research projects in Egypt, Nubia, Ethiopia, and the Sudan to continue his primary research at dozens of field sites to study ancient African social organization and spiritual culture, observe cultural retentions, document modern forgeries, and to record the vanishing evidence of classical African civilizations in the Nile Valley. His latest mission since 2011 has been to organize the Save Nubia Project (SNP) to help preserve the archaeological sites of ancient Kush and Nubia in the Sudan, which are threatened by the ongoing construction of a series of dams. Ampim’s body of work for 27 years has earned him the recognition as one of the leading authorities on ancient African culture and contributions to the world.  The SNP collective was founded in February 2012 to help lead this effort in saving the remains of the classical Kushite and Nubian civilizations in Sudan, and other areas of northeast Africa.

www.manuampim.com

The Sudanese government is in the middle of constructing a series of dams in northern and eastern Sudan to create hydroelectric energy.  However, these projects will continue to immediately flood all nearby archaeological sites, threaten to turn the flowing Nile River into a string of stagnant lakes, and begin construction without announcement because of the major protests from local affected communities, particularly Nubians who are disputing the benefits of the proposed Dal Dam (2nd cataract) and Kajbar Dam (3rd cataract). The Sudanese government has indicated that the dams will create additional electricity for the benefit of the local citizens, and electricity is indeed an uncontested factor for a country to develop, but the means to acquire this electricity is often contested and controversial. The local Nubians in the affected areas do not agree that these hydroelectric projects will benefit them, and this is based on their past experiences with the construction of the Aswan High Dam (1970), which flooded an important Nubian region in southern Egypt and northern Sudan.  The Aswan High Dam created a 340-mile long lake which flooded 39 Nubian villages displacing around 120,000 people, and submerged innumerable priceless artifacts.  The Merowe Dam (2008) in northern Sudan flooded more than 2,500 ancient Kushite archaeological sites and displaced 50-70 thousand Amri and Manasir, and many of these families and farmers have never been compensated for their loss of land and livelihood.  Yet, the new Upper Atbara-Setit Dam Complex in eastern Sudan is schedule to open in 2016, and has displaced tens of thousands of people, many of whom have not received any of the promised compensation by the government.

Thus, the Nubians are convinced that the current hydroelectric projects are simply part of an ongoing scheme to erase their culture, and they have organized major demonstrations against them, particularly at the Kajbar site.  The Nubian environmental scientist Dr. Arif Gamal, notes that "By flooding the last of the remaining Nubian lands...the Nubians are reduced to a group of people with no sense of memory, no past and no future to look for."  The effected communities including the Nubian voices should be respected in this matter, and the World Commission on Dams has clearly indicated in its November 2000 report that no dam should be built without "the demonstrable acceptance" of the affected people.