Fredrick Kyalo Manthi

African has yielded thousands of prehistoric remains that have placed the continent as the birthplace of humanity. Kenya’s contribution to understanding particularly human evolution has been immense, and the National Museums of Kenya (NMK) has been in the forefront advancing this. The NMK also houses one of Africa’s best Casting Laboratory where casts are produced for scientific research, teaching and exhibitions. The Laboratory was established in the 1960s, and strengthened in the early 1970s through Wenner-Gren Foundation’s Anthro-Cast Program, which aimed at facilitating the production and marketing of replicas of fossil remains from different parts of the world. In Africa, molds of original fossils were taken from fossils from among other countries, South Africa and Kenya. In Kenya as was the case in other African countries, the molds were developed largely by white researchers. The Anthro-Cast Program thus perpetuated the same imperialism that many African nations were fighting or slowly emerging from. It is however important to appreciate that the Anthro-Cast Program helped to establish a strong Casting Program at the NMK. This proposal seeks funds to among others upgrade the Casting Laboratory at the NMK in order to meet the growing need for casts of Kenyan prehistory collections.