Digitisation is a sustainable means of heritage preservation. It protects valuable heritage resources from deterioration and provides worldwide access to the diverse cultures of the world’s heritage, while ensuring their safety for future generations. Digitised heritage can derive either from digitally created documents or from digital surrogates of similar documents. In OAPI States, ministries in the field of culture, substitute and for, tourism and several cultural institutions have adopted digital heritage as a tool for safeguarding the communities’ cultural patrimony. Data authenticity in heritage digitisation raises some concerns based on the fact that digitisation as a tool to express the content of heritage products affects the entire spectrum of heritage preservation. Issues arise from the multiple applications of digital technologies on the heritage data used. From converting the data used, to processing it with a different shape, character or design, there is a long list of ways in which the authenticity of a digitised heritage work could be affected. Digital technologies could negatively affect the information environment by allowing the processing of inauthentic data. In this context, Mira Burri describes the process of the digital reduction of material to zeroes and ones through which the digital representation radically modifies the characteristics of the content. One click of the mouse can create perfect copies, transform, alter, or create multifaceted adaptations of the heritage data; this constitutes a tremendous threat to the data’s authenticity. If no appropriate legal boundaries are set, this invasive tsunami of new possibilities could deceive the public about the authenticity of heritage data from OAPI communities. This paper gives a pictorial overview of traditional cultural expressions in central and West Africa and scrutinises the sustainability of copyright as a means to enhance the authenticity of heritage data in the course of its preservation in the digital realm.