Germany supports Creative Industry project to help fight youth unemployment in Mozambique

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Germany supports Creative Industry project to help fight youth unemployment in Mozambique

1:01 CAT | 23 Nov 2018

Photo: DW

The Mozambican-German Cultural Creative and the Mozambique-Germany Chamber of Commerce have launched a ‘Creative Industry’ project to help talented young artists become self-employed.

German Ambassador to Maputo Detlev Wolter notes that many young people in the country show talent in various cultural areas but lack support in becoming self-employed – one good reason why Mozambique should invest in youth promoted creative industries.

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“We want to support two aspects: Mozambican culture and also employment. In partnership with German institutions with a lot of experience in this field, namely the Mozambique-Germany Chamber of Commerce, the Goethe Institute and the Mozambican-German Cultural Centre, we look forward to supporting efforts to kick-start self-employment,” Wolter explains.

Importance of funding

The Creative Industry project, launched this Wednesday (21.11) in Maputo, is aimed at young artists who have talent but lack the financial capacity to operate as a business.

“We see a very creative culture in Africa and Mozambique, especially in music. Artists here have very slender financial means, so this initiative to support creative start-ups will help young people become more self-sufficient,” Volter adds.

Konstanze Kampfer, the director of the Mozambican-German Cultural Centre, says that, for Mozambican youth to succeed, it must maintain contacts with other countries.

Mosambik Edson Mahotas (DW/R. da Silva) — *Edson Mahotas*

“We are part of the Goethe Institute family, which is co-financed by the German Foreign Ministry. Goethe has won a major project that is being implemented in three world cities – Thessaloniki [in Greece], Jakarta [in Indonesia] and Johannesburg [in South Africa] – to create networks for young entrepreneurs and empower them in their own particular artistic areas,” Kampfer says.

Optimistic Artists

Artists want to embrace this project because they understand that there are many talented young people in various cultural areas, musician Samito Tembe says.

“It’s a praiseworthy initiative, because young creators now have an opportunity to create more to sell,” he says.

Musician and composer Edson Mahotas is another young man eager to embrace the Creative Industry project as a launching pad for success.

“It’s offering a solution that we’ve been waiting for for a long time. For those of us starting out in the creative industries, it’s very difficult to break into the market. It’s not so difficult to make events, but to make quality events is. The more support we have, the better able we will be to respond to market demand and produce better quality artists and events,” he says.

The Creative Industry project is a partnership between the Mozambican-German Chamber of Commerce, the Mozambican-German Cultural Centre and Standard Bank.

Source: Deutsche Welle