The Dogon Virtual Archive provides a broad range of information on the West African Dogon people and their settlement area. It encompasses a large amount of primary and secondary data of various types and formats, the initial data set originating from research undertaken at the Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde, Leiden (Netherlands) and from its collections. It is hoped that this open access cultural heritage repository on the Dogon will over time be enriched by more and more institutions and individuals making their collections of Dogon objects and research data/results available via the ECHO platform. The Dogon Virtual Archive could be a resource that is not only of use for the Western researcher and the general public, but also for the Dogon themselves, who have seen their culture exploited and even shaped by Western tourism and research interests. In this sense the Dogon Virtual Archive could one day play an important role not only in the perception and understanding of the Dogon by the Western world, but also in the self-definition of the Dogon people in allowing them (at least virtual) access to their heritage.

NECEP is an ECHO project, and is about the development of the technology for an interactive database on non-european societies.