Angola and Gabon signed, this afternoon in Libreville, a cooperation agreement in the cultural sector. The gesture, part of President João Lourenço’s official visit to the neighbouring country, may seem like a routine diplomatic event, but it raises important questions about our vision of culture, identity, and international strategy.
At a time when the African continent is struggling to reconnect with itself after decades of colonialism and unbalanced globalization, cultural cooperation between African countries should be seen as a central pillar of development—not merely a symbolic act to fill a State visit agenda.
This agreement can and should be more than the usual exchange of gifts and promises. It can mean the sharing of ancestral knowledge, the recovery of forgotten memories, the exchange of artists, the creation of shared spaces for cultural and artistic training, and even the production of content that challenges the Eurocentric dominance of our education systems.
The problem, as almost always, is not in signing documents, but in their implementation. How many cultural agreements have we signed in the last 20 years? And how many of them have produced tangible results? How many young Angolan artists know the rhythms, poets, painters, and thinkers of Gabon—and vice versa?
If we truly want an Africa that cooperates with itself, we must move beyond paper diplomacy. What is expected now is a concrete plan, with transparent funding, clear goals, and measurable impact. Exchanging books, opening joint artist residencies, creating regional festivals, promoting national languages, and investing in training centres are actions that could turn this agreement into a true engine of cultural renaissance.
João Lourenço, by visiting Gabon, has the opportunity to show that culture is not an appendix of foreign policy but its soul. Let this agreement not be just a photo opportunity, but the seed of a new cultural Pan-Africanism, where Angola and Gabon look each other in the eye and say: “We are brothers and we have stories to share.”
Because without a living, critical, and emancipated culture, any cooperation will always be poor—even if built on oil and diamonds.
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