Mozambique-China Cultural Centre: Completion deadline may be compromised

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Mozambique-China Cultural Centre: Completion deadline may be compromised

3:24 CAT | 31 Jul 2020

All photos: Ministry of Culture and Tourism

The Minister of Culture and Tourism, Eldevina Materula, on Tuesday visited the Mozambique-China Cultural Centre, which is being built through close cooperation between the Government of Mozambique and the Government of China.

Assessing the level of execution of the works, Minister Materula visited the main spaces of the cultural centre, which, in addition to exhibition and multi-use rooms, will have auditoria for arts, cultural and social events.

Eldevina Materula was satisfied with the level of execution, but drew attention to the need to build rooms suitable for different cultural genres such as music, dance, theatre and cinema, taking care of appropriate acoustic engineering.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic , 400 Mozambican workers were made redundant, which has slowed the pace of construction and may compromise the 2021 completion deadline.

Expressing concern about this, the minister said that the Ministry of Culture and Tourism was open to offering support in all situations resulting from the pandemic in the process of this enterprise.

Project Director Cao Jinming assured the minister that all workers’ rights were being respected, and that they would be reinstated as soon as work resumed in the “new normal”.

“The [Mozambican] government will honour its commitments,” Minster Materula said. “Building a space of this dimension is not easy, whether in Mozambique or anywhere in the world. We also count on the Chinese government for the human resources training in the management of this centre, because we are sure that this project will dignify our country, in terms of cultural infrastructure.”

The Mozambique-China Cultural Centre is the first and only one of its kind in Africa because of its size and technological complexity.

It will incorporate computer and multimedia rooms; a library; an amphitheatre for lectures; an exhibitions gallery for visual arts and for crafts; a music recording studio; a record label; a space to present fashion shows; and two car parks.

The infrastructure is located on the main campus of the Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo, and is expected to be completed in the second half of 2021.