Raising awareness towards the empowerment and promotion of African Culture

Today we feature Witnei Lia (@witnei_lia) also known as Ms.Turbanic from Maputo, Mozambique. Wtnei is a young and upcoming Mozambican creative designer, mostly focused on raising awareness towards the empowerment and promotion of African Culture.

Her journey began during a period she was struggling with her identity. Growing up overseas, there was always a struggle to express or explain her origins. When she finally returned to Mozambique in 2012, Witnei felt there was an urgent need to explore these origins.

"I came to the conclusion that the access to information concerning culture and tradition was very scarce. Most of it was centralized among the elder generation (our grand parents) causing the youth to have very little interest and resulting in many of them being influenced by the western tendencies. Automatically I knew something had to be done urgently, before such rich and important information became extinct." said Witnei

In April 2013 she started aher brand/movement with the help of some friends called WUMBURI which has the main objective to "Empower and Promote" African Culture.

"Our goal was to become that link of information that would pass cultural teachings from one generation to the other. Surprisingly the movement  has been doing very well and I've been able to observe that in the past year many more young people have developed an interest for their culture. We see this by how many of them tend to wear more clothing from traditional fabrics, how many more attend cultural events and many other statistics."

"With the birth of Wumburi, a lot more came along such as my blog with writer and Poet Eliana Nzualo "Nzualo na Khumalo." A Blog where we explore some of the places and cultural aspects of Mozambique. A visual trip through such cultural richness that many pass by every day but don't realize its importance."

"It´s our own responsibility to keep our culture alive, and I do so in any productive manner that I believe will contribute so that future generations can also raise their heads high and be proud of being an African."

Below are some links to learn more about Witnei.

• https://www.facebook.com/witnei.chamusso
• https://www.facebook.com/wumburi
• https://nzualonakhumalo.wordpress.com/
• https://twitter.com/Lia_Witnei