Construction of the most important museum on human evolution in Africa will begin at the end of the year. The project, designed by the famous architect Daniel Libeskind, who rebuilt New York's Word Trade Center after the collapse of the Twin Towers, was presented two years ago and malindikenya.net discussed it here.
Now everything is ready because the client, the famous paleoanthropologist and conservationist Richard Leakey, together with his wife Maeve, has made 300 acres available in the Kajiado region, more precisely in Loodariak, to build what will be a real attraction for researchers, students, enthusiasts and tourists from all over the world.
The "Museum of Human Gender", named Ngaren in honour of the first hominid that appeared in Turkana, has received 8 billion shillings in funding.
Inside, in addition to multimedia rooms and educational rooms, hundreds of fossils from the Leakey family's findings in Kenya and Ethiopia will be preserved, and other important evidence will be transferred from the Natural History Museum in Nairobi.
"The Ngaren Museum represents a celebration of the beginning of all humanity, of life and of its incredible biodiversity - said Leakey, announcing the beginning of the construction of the museum that will see the light in 2026 - It is dedicated to the education of humanity about our common past and tells the story of our ancestors and our whole epic evolutionary journey".
Ngaren was developed in collaboration with the Naturalis Biodiversity Center Museum and Research in the Netherlands and will be the first fully digital facility in Africa to exhibit life-size African dinosaurs.
The facility, which will also have a section dedicated to prehistoric and ancient art in Africa, will host the museum, partner institutions, a restaurant, conference rooms and a small amphitheatre for social, corporate and family events.
Ngaren will boast up to two million years of human history and the origins of the universe - from evolution to biodiversity, overpopulation, war, disease and climate change, to discovery and exploration.
Leakey, 75 years of which spent a large part on research in the Kenyan territory but also founder of the Kenya Wildlife Service (his autobiographical book "Wildlife Wars" is very interesting and you can read about it here), has risen to the honour of the chronicles of anthropology for the discovery of the so-called "Turkana Boy" and for this reason he also has in mind a second museum, on the shores of the lake between Kenya and Ethiopia.
"Somehow we think that, as human beings, we are a special creation. So we destroy the bees that waste their ability to pollinate plants, we destroy the plants themselves by increasing temperatures and getting less and less healthy and nutritious food and we pollute our oceans by collapsing their entire food chain - explains the scholar - this museum is to affirm the greatness of our Planet and its history, compared to our mortality".