Talatona - The minister of Culture and Tourism, Filipe Zau, Monday in Luanda Province emphasised the contribution of culture to poverty reduction as well as inclusive and equitable development, with a focus on people as the main element for active participation in productive and cultural life.
Speaking at a ceremony honouring cultural agents, he said that putting culture at the centre of development policies is a fundamental investment for the future of the planet and an indispensable requirement for a successful planning process, integrating the principle of cultural diversity, adding that no development can be sustainable without the presence of culture.
"The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) began to question the effectiveness of the development strategies adopted after the Second World War, since they can hardly respond today to the major challenges facing developing countries," he said.
He argued that the need to change is now a key factor in cultural development and is implemented through a process of intercultural education with the creation and proper management of infrastructures capable of sustaining an internal development paradigm.
For him, strategies should be implemented to validate and valorise the common cultural heritage, to promote literature and the arts, without losing sight of the cultural universe in different geographies, always in logics of complementarity and never exclusion.
In this regard, he called on Angolans to look at Angola as Africans look at Africa and as citizens of the world to which they also belong, to get to know and interpret what is happening culturally on the planet, but always from their own eyes in Angola.
He said that there are always aspects that, whether or not they take refuge in culture sector, influence social good when they promote values such as the primacy of peace, human rights, the rule of democratic law, social justice and national unity, just as there are others that influence in the opposite direction, opening up space for darkness, discord, disinformation, conflicts, lies, and social anomaly.
The creation of the Museum of Cinema and Moving Images, the construction of the Palace of Music and Theatre, the Artist's House, the Mbanza dos Ngola, the Mukulo Angola Memorial, the reconstruction of former Kongo kingdom’s structures in Mbanza Kongo City, the recovery of museum artefacts that will be exhibited in the Museum of Anthropology, the construction of a new National Library, the restoration of the São Francisco do Penedo Fortress for the creation of the Museum of the National Liberation Struggle, the inauguration of two Cultural Centres of Excellence, one in Huambo and another in Luanda, are some of the Ministry of Culture’s actions planned for this year.
"We are all needed to build a country worthy of all those who fought for the freedom and sovereignty of this country and who today should be the object of our greatest gratitude and respect. It is up to us today, from a cultural point of view, to work in favour of identity, otherness and ecumenism, as a strategy for unity in diversity and respect for difference," he said.
National Culture Day is a date of great historical symbolism. It was established in 1986 in honour of the speech given by the first Angolan President and founder of the nation, António Agostinho Neto, on the occasion of the inauguration of the governing bodies of the Union of Angolan Writers (UEA).
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