World renowned paleoanthropologist and conservationist Dr Richard Leakey has found himself at odds with Turkana County top brass after he decided to shift a massive Kes 8.2b museum project from Ngaren in Turkana to Loodariak in Kajiado.
The Museum of Humankind project team said it opted to move facility from Turkana due to poor transport access to the remote site.
“Although major fossil finding and the Turkana Base Institute are oriented around Lake Turkana, Ngaren, the museum cannot be built there. After mapping the area and looking into infrastructure and economic value for Kenya’s tourism and travel industry, Turkana as a location is logistically impractical,” the museum project liaison officer for Kenya and the Netherlands, Karin Boomsma, told a local daily.
But the decision has not gone down well with Turkana County Governor Josphat Nanok who has termed the move as “theft of the (Turkana) community’s heritage”.
“We stand to lose our heritage similar to the loss of African historical fossils to the West, our idea, our name Ngaren and even funds jointly raised for the project raised. We will apply our might to stop this theft,” he said.
Dr Leakey has already commissioned the construction of the museum in Kajiado. Work on the facility will begin later this year and is expected to be complete by 2026. The museum is designed by Daniel Libeskind, the architect who rebuilt the World Trade Center in New York.
It will sit on 300 acres donated by Dr Leakey and his wife Maeve in honour of the family’s discovery of the best-preserved fossils of man’s ancestors.
The museum will present over two million years of human history in a building inspired by the forms of ancient hand axes and other primitive tools.
