23 November 2018 Marrakech

Marrakech has just been designated African Capital of Culture 2020, a showcase of today’s urban Africa, highlighting the diversity of African cultural expressions, announced on Friday in Marrakech, the Mayor of the ochre city, Mohamed Larbi Belcaid.

In 2020, Marrakech, this thousand-year-old city doubly inscribed on the universal heritage list, first through its medina since 1985 but also Jamaa Lafna Square as an intangible heritage in 2001, will bear the colors of African culture, he welcomed.

As a world-renowned tourist destination, Marrakech has an important hotel, tourist, event, sports and cultural infrastructure that is very dense, as evidenced by the fabric of museums, traditional and contemporary art centres, he said.

The human ground, the concern for multiculturality and the richness of its heritage allow Marrakech to launch a pilot edition of African Capitals of Culture, he said, calling for the creation of a Marrakech 2020 organizing committee and also to install an organizing committee of African capitals in Marrakech.

The African Capitals of Culture, which will be launched for the first time, see themselves as a major event, anchored and managed in Africa and radiating internationally. It is an initiative that brings together and promotes the expertise, know-how and skills on the continent and in the diaspora that make up today’s Africa and shape tomorrow’s world.