Spanish businessmen interested in anthropological tourism

 Mbanza Kongo - Spanish businessman Joan Riera on Thursday in Mbanza Kongo, northern Zaire Province, expressed interest in boosting anthropological cultural tourism in the region.

Talking to the press, Joan Riera, who is also a tour guide, promised to put Mbanza Kongo in the popular imagination of the foreign tourists and bring experts in reviving cultural action, an area in which he has worked for 25 years.

 

The Spanish businessman wants also to bring to Mbanza Kongo foreign tourists wth investor capacity and other businesspeople to boost touristic activities.

 

To him, Mbanza Kongo´s intangible cultural heritage is what can attract more foreign tourists, highlighting that the old buildings, temples and churches do not express anymore a novelty for European travellers and others.

 

In this context, he highlighted the region´s indigineous language (Kikongo), tradition, the arts and other local traditional rituals as fundamental elements for the development of the anthropological cultural tourism segment.

 

The Spaniard, who has been living in Angola for four years, considers the ancestral habits and customs of the regions as a leverage to promote the tourism sector in order to make the most of this potential with the engagement of the private business community.

 

“Here there is an unknown treasure, an enormous potential. There is a need to engage private companies, the traditional authorities and other agents to boost this potential”, he stressed.

 

He advised residents to continue preserving the material and immaterial cultural heritage, which he compared to a treasure that includes places of memory and historical sites, music, language, rituals, dance and traditional gastronomy, amongst others.

 

The Spanish businessman, owner of a tourist agency based in Luanda, was accompanied by three other Spanish specialists and professors of anthropology in Spain.

 

On his turn, the Spanish anthropologist Luís Font, defended the need to preserve and protect the oral tradition of the old Kongo Kingdom and its transmission from generation to generation.

 

He explained that the perpetuation of this oral tradition involves valuing those who have knowledge of the ancestral culture and who keep intact the customs, traditions and other elements that constitute the intangible heritage of the Kongo people.

 

According to the anthropologist, what is at stake is the ancestral culture rooted in the Kongo people themselves, before the arrival of Christianity and the colonial occupation of the territory that shaped the Kongo Kingdom.

 

“Tourism is the first step towards the valuing of a country”, he stressed, recalling that with good investment this sector can generate wealth, income and countless jobs posts.

 

The historic centre of Mbanza Kongo, capital of the former Kingdom of Kongo, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site since July 2017.