HOW TIGRAY COMMUNITY SAVED AXUM TREASURES

Not all of Africa’s treasures were looted - it helped, for example, if you hid it under a mountain!

That’s what the ancestors of Ethiopia’s Tigray community did in the town of Axum.

Locals knew from folklore that there was something special under the local mountain, so when a road-construction project started drilling into the rock a decade or so back, they urged the authorities to intervene.

This they did, and what they found only added to Axum’s fame - already dubbed an ‘open air museum’ and designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1980.

In this clip, travel vlogger Weyni Tesfin (aka @planbacktoafrica) tells the tale in full from the site itself.

Do you think you’ll visit?