Artists flock to EAC festival to promote integration

Seventy-five local artists are carrying Rwanda’s flag at the second edition of the ‘Jumuiya ya Afrika Mashariki Utamaduni Festival’ (JAMAFEST), the East African Community arts and culture festival in Nairobi, Kenya. Edward Kalisa, the permanent secretary at the Ministry of Sports and Culture (MINISPOC), yesterday told The New Times that Rwanda’s representatives are artists from different categories. The festival, running from August 2 to 8 under the theme, “Unleashing the Economic Potential of Cultural and Creative Industries in the East African Community,” gives the people of East Africa another opportunity to gather in strengthening our common identity, according to EAC Secretary-General Richard Sezibera. In a statement, Sezibera said the festival gives the people of East Africa another opportunity to gather as a people with a common destiny to celebrate “our culture” and to acknowledge its significance in “strengthening our common identity.” It is an occasion, he said, for East Africans to appreciate the significance of coming together to interact and share experiences in order to foster social cohesion and unity. Held on rotational basis among EAC partner states, JAMAFEST was first held in Kigali, in 2013. “JAMAFEST aims at promoting regional integration at the socio-cultural level through arts and culture by providing a platform to showcase culture as a primary driver of EAC integration and sustainable development; bringing together East African cultural practitioners and administrators to celebrate the region’s rich and diverse cultural heritage, as well as provide space for intercultural dialogue among East Africans,” Sezibera said. Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania each have more than 200 participants representing them in the festival that operationalises the EAC Treaty’s Article 119 that stipulates that partner states shall promote close cooperation among themselves in respect to cultural activities. The festival was planned to integrate a multiplicity of events and activities as part of the eight-day fiesta. Events and activities include a carnival, art exhibitions and sales, workshops and symposiums, live performances, films, literature, fashion, culinary arts as well as a cultural village at which the partner states will showcase their cultures. “In cultural expressions such as music, dance, art and crafts, people share cultural values and are able to feel oneness as well as the cohesion that exists among them as one people with a common destiny,” Sezibera said. “Given that culture serves as a unifier and upholds the moral fibre of any community through social and economic development, its centrality in the political, social and economic spheres of our Community cannot be overlooked.”

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Artists flock to EAC festival to promote integration