Mozambicans’ lack of knowledge about Mozambique needs to be solved – Mia Couto

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Mozambicans’ lack of knowledge about Mozambique needs to be solved – Mia Couto

12:48 CAT | 07 Mar 2019

Photo: O País

Mia Couto has suggested that our universities engage in research about the country, so that history does not get manipulated. The writer added that it is necessary to solve Mozambicans’ lack of knowledge about Mozambique.

The challenges of research in the current context of Mozambique’s higher education was the theme of the ‘Lectio Magistralis’ given by Couto on Wednesday morning at the University of São Tomás de Moçambique, in Maputo.

Couto began by emphasising that humility was the greatest research instrument, because it is only by assuming that you do not know, that you can know more. And it is this exercise that he deems necessary in Mozambique.

Research in Africa, for Couto, was not going well. Neither was it in Mozambique, since there was little production and a substantial dependence on external funds.

And, because he was speaking at a university, Couto used the occasion to criticise what he called “research invisibility”.

Addressing the young audience, Mia Couto urged them to question and challenge reality, and so produce new knowledge, and to stop thinking that, in order to get where they wanted to be, they must be the children of influential people, or dishonest.

By Cledy Marinela

Source: O País