Luanda - The President of the Republic, João Lourenço, landed late this afternoon in the country's capital (Luanda), after completing a working visit of a few hours to Zaire province on Wednesday.
At the provincial headquarters of Zaire (Mbanza Kongo), President João Lourenço held a private meeting with the local governor, Adriano Mendes de Carvalho, as well as guided a meeting with the provincial government and visited the works of the Zaire General Hospital.
At the meeting with the provincial government, the Head of State came into contact with a detailed report on the socio-economic life of the region.
At the meeting, which was also attended by members of the Executive, Mendes de Carvalho presented the pressing needs of the province, in the political, economic and social domains.
The governor requested support for the creation of an open-air museum, in order to store and show the archaeological collection of the then Kingdom of Congo, which had the city of Mbanza Congo as its capital.
He argued that the province needs a football field, at least for seven thousand spectators, taking into account the history of the sport in the region.
Adriano Mendes de Carvalho recalled that the first game of the Girabola took place in Mbanza Congo, in the distant year of 1979, as well as the rise to the national championship of the first division of a local team, after a long time.
Zaire
Inhabited since the Palaeolithic period, the province of Zaire has rivers that make it especially fertile.
The then Kingdom of Kongo, founded in 1390 and which would be an independent state until 1857, was ruled by the Menekongo dynasty, and its capital, Mbanza-Congo, was the largest and most organized city in subequatorial Africa.
With lands and a climate favorable to the cultivation of tropical products and animal husbandry, waters rich in fish, quality wood and beautiful and surprising scenery waiting to delight visitors, Zaire depends, above all, on the exploitation of oil, the main resource of the region.
With the election of the historic center of the city of Mbanza Congo as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, the province now has a new pole of attraction that can boost tourism.
Zaire is one of the 10 provinces of Angola with international borders (Democratic Republic of the Congo). It extends over 40,130 km2, inhabited by about 500 thousand inhabitants.
The province is divided into six municipalities, namely, M'banza Congo, Cuimba, Noqui, Nzeto, Soyo and Tomboco.
The capital of Zaire is Mbanza-Congo, which was once the capital of the powerful Kingdom of Congo. SC/DOJ
