The content of the Angola Pavilion "was based on Sona's tradition," explained Albina Assis, Angola's commissioner-general for Expo 2020 Dubai, an event that kicked off on 1 October and lasts until March next year.
From the general theme of the world exhibition "Connecting Minds, Creating the Future" (Connecting Minds, Creating the Future), the motto "Connecting tradition to innovate", linked to the opportunity, was reached, although the Angola Pavilion is located in the mobility district (Expo Dubai is divided into three sub-themes, called districts: sustainability, mobility and opportunity).
"Because precisely connecting minds to create the future is to bring everything together for innovation," explained the commissioner-general of Angola.
"And we looked to our past to innovate. This is fundamentally the theme of our pavilion, based on the Sona culture, which is a traditional culture in a region of our country, the eastern region of the Lundas", where the people originate Tchokwe, "which in the past, long before there were countries, was a Lunda empire".
Sona, recently elevated to the category of intangible cultural heritage, is a teaching culture "with drawings in the sand". "These drawings in the sand are connected with an innovation, that is, a technology that is the binary language. The drawings in the sand is zero, it is the line, our pavilion is exactly based on that", added Albina Assis.
About the entrance to the pavilion, the responsible person described: "It's what I call 'my jango'", which in African tradition is a place where people meet and receive friends and where "everything is done, but open, only it has the roof," he said.
"That's why this pavilion of ours is also like this: it's open, the zero is this part of the entrance and then we have the line which is the part where we are, which is the part where the exhibition is", she detailed. "We really try to show that from tradition we can reach what is modern and what is current", stressed the official.
Within the exhibition, Angola has three 'clusters': technology, education and employment.
In the area of employment, the country presents examples of 'startups' such as Tupuca, which distributes food, pharmaceutical products, or other technology for scheduling medical appointments, among others.
"In addition to showing this culture, we are also interested in showing that Angola is a country that is in progress, it is a country that is developing in order to attract what we need: investments", she stressed.
"We need to attract investments and our investments have no color or flag, whether they come from the north, south of Europe, from Asia, they are investments, because Angola needs to develop and no country can only develop with its own means. " he continued.
In fact, "countries develop globally, with resources coming from all sides and that is what Angola seeks to do", he said, stressing that within the programs Angola is B2B ('business to business'), so that, "together with investors here, locals, and investors from other countries that are present", it is possible to see "what are the means of investing in areas" such as agriculture.
"Angola is an extremely agricultural country", but if it has "10 percent of the cultivated area it is a lot", she pointed out, noting that there are "many virgin areas" in the country.
Albina Assis, who was Minister of Petroleum, recalls that in 2007, in an MBA thesis she did, she drew attention to the need for Angola, which is a producer country, to give sustainability to oil.
"How? Transforming oil income into other renewable income" such as renewable energy, agriculture, fisheries and other mineral resources.
"We have other mineral resources, small jewelry, iron, copper, but we also have a very important mineral resource that is closely linked to where we are located [Dubai, United Arab Emirates], which are diamonds," he pointed out.
"Angola is one of the countries in Africa with a very high production of diamonds and this leads us to have a very strong connection with this country because this country is also a great buyer of diamonds. This and others, but above all this country", finished off.
Does it mean that Angola is in the right place? "It's in the right place. That's just the way it is. We've been going around a lot, but now we've landed in the right place as they say", replied Albina Assis promptly, smiling.
The official highlighted the good relations between Portuguese-speaking countries and highlighted the success of the Festival da Lusofonia, which took place in October.
"We have very good relations with Portugal", she said, "regardless of the pastel de nata and the Port wine", and Angola has already been present at the Pavilhão de Portugal.
In addition, she pointed out "the honor" of the visit of the Portuguese Culture minister, Graça Fonseca, to have visited the Angolan pavilion.
About the history of the Festival da Lusofonia, Albina Assis says that everything was born out of a conversation she had with the former Portuguese commissioner about making an initiative about the Portuguese language.
After exchanging conversations with colleagues from other countries, the Expo 2020 Dubai organization supported and was the only festival held so far based on language criteria (the festivals have been held by continents).
It's because? "I say it and I repeat it, because Portuguese, although it is a language that sometimes seems unknown, is spoken on four continents".
Currently, the daily average of visits to the Angola Pavilion is around 5000.
Albina Assis underlined that this event, unlike Expo in Italy, is held during a pandemic period, but he is optimistic. Asked about expectations, she said that "they are very positive".
And he added: "I am impressed to see so many people coming in, people like it, this is a lot different and people (...) don't want to see what they see every day, they want to see it differently and this pavilion has the advantage to make a difference," he concluded.
