The “lost archive” of former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin and materials documenting the country’s history between 1947 and 1986 has been registered by UNESCO.

In June 2015, Professor Richard Vokes, from The University of Western Australia’s School of Social Sciences and Uganda Broadcasting Corporation’s managing director Winston Agaba and archivist Malachi Kabaale, rediscovered the “lost archive” in Kampala.

UWA and UBC have now succeeded in having the Uganda National Media Archive officially registered under UNESCO’s Memory of the World program.

The archives include 60,640 official photographs from Idi Amin’s regime, which killed up to 300,000 of its own citizens.

The discovery also includes thousands of films and hundreds of sound reels, shellac and vinyl records alongside other media.

Professor Vokes, who researches and teaches anthropology, authored a paper on the archive’s rediscovery published in Visual Anthropology Review.

“The vast majority of these materials were produced by Uganda’s official media units between 1947 and 1986, and as such, they provide extraordinary new insights into the country’s history,” Professor Vokes said.

“It also reveals a lot about broader issues of the 20th century, including colonial and post-colonial media, Pan-Africanism, African decolonisation, Cold War geopolitics and the history of developmentalism in the Global South.”

Since 2018, UWA’s Ethnography Lab has been contributing to Uganda Broadcasting Corporation’s efforts to conserve and digitise the materials and to bring them to public attention.

The Memory of the World register recognises documentary archives that are of global  significance, and which constitute the common heritage of humanity.