"The Executive Council is a space where decision-making can be influenced in the sense of equity and for countries to feel part of a whole", said Ana Maria de Oliveira, Angola's ambassador to UNESCO, in statements to Lusa.
For the anthropologist who has maintained ties with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) since independence, Angola's current presence on the Executive Council, which will last until 2025, "has a strategy", indicating that the country expects concrete advances in the fields of science and education.
"Our presence on the Executive Board has a strategy and we will try to materialize it in these four years. This strategy has to do with the consolidation of projects, both in terms of education and scientific research, which is fundamental and we already have programs that are happen", said the diplomat.
In this strategy, Luanda is also fighting to end the under-representation of African countries in UNESCO structures and in the institution's own human resources.
"There is the issue of under-representation of African countries in some UNESCO programs and in the placement of staff around the world. There are countries that are not represented at all", denounced Ana Maria de Oliveira.
The former Angolan Minister of Culture, who was also a deputy for two decades, having arrived as an ambassador to UNESCO in 2020, also revealed that the country is bidding to join the organization's Intangible Heritage Committee, and is also preparing new candidacies to present to this committee.
"We have traditional games that are also spread in neighboring countries, religious practices of a Catholic scope and there is also the rivet dance, which has characteristics of European ballroom dances and has gained a great dimension. The practice becomes a mixture and becomes a heritage that does not concern only Angola", he explained.
These will also be years of promotion of the only site classified in Angola as a World Heritage Site, Mbanza Congo, the capital of the Kingdom of Congo, a place that Ana Maria de Oliveira has helped to conserve and promote since the early 1990s and which must now be known all over the world.
"With researchers and scientists from the most diverse areas legitimizing the classification of a space like Mbanza Congo, they raised a series of problems, carried out research and gave relevance to a heritage that was in our custody, practically unknown and that is gradually being valued. and making it known to the world", he concluded.
