The Angolan President has approved an agreement worth 100 billion kwanzas (110 million euros) to finance the recovery and conservation of the historical and cultural sites of M’Banza, Congo, in Zaire province.
According to the presidential order published in the Diário da Republica, the work is justified by the need to comply with UNESCO recommendations and is part of the promotion and boost of cultural tourism in that historic region of national and world importance.
The financing agreement between Angola and the Áurea-SDVM company, through the financing line structured by the Angolan Investment Bank, aims to finance public works contracts and supervision for the restoration of historical and cultural sites.
The historic center of the city of Mbanza, Congo, was inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 2017, making it the first classification of its kind in the country.
Angola’s application stressed that the Kingdom of Congo was perfectly organized when the Portuguese arrived in the 15th century. The classified area involves a complex whose boundaries cover a hill at an altitude of 570 meters and which stretches along six corridors. It includes ruins and spaces that have since been the subject of excavations and archaeological studies involving national and foreign specialists.
Divided into six provinces that occupied part of today’s Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of Congo, Angola, and Gabon, the Kingdom of Congo had 12 churches, convents, schools, palaces, and residences.
The cemetery of the former Kings of the Congo or the museum, adapted from the former palace of that monarchy and which today houses some of the centuries-old relics of that people, are other historic spaces covered by the UNESCO classification.
Mbanza, Congo, was known at the time for the spread of writing as the “city of bells” due to the conversion of the kings of the Congo to Christianity introduced by contacts with the Portuguese.
