IASA 2019 Annual Conference

In most parts of Sub Saharan Africa today and in Cameroon in particular, the job of the archivist seems to have been abandoned in the hands of the elderly or the aging. Most young people believe that the archiving profession is not prestigious enough as opposed to other professions which seem to have been highly branded. Reasons why they shy away from it or the few who engage as archivist are not proud of their jobs. This in turn affects how the profession is practiced, be it in the audiovisual or paper domain, but also threatens the future of archiving and records management in this part of the glob.
This presentation seeks to present findings on why the young people are shying away from the RM profession, how the field can be branded to attract the youthful population and what are the stakes if intentional action is not taken in this direction. Methods used in this research where both qualitative like one on one interviews, focus groups and qualitative through the distribution of questionnaires and discussions on social media platforms. Findings demonstrate that records management and archiving are paid lesser attention in most Sub Saharan African countries due to the fact that it has been termed the job for the old and branding can be a great mile stone to solving the problem.