EXPO: Eritrea National Day, friendship, colors music, and a focus on arid zones
MILAN EXPO – Expo Milan 2015 celebrated on Sunday the National Day of Eritrea with a series of “friendship events” . The Italian and Eritrean national anthems opened the program dedicated to the African country which is showcasing its national agricultural production within the Arid Zones Cluster. The concept behind Eritrea’s participation to Expo 2015 is in the opportunities which can transform all arid zones of the planet into sustainable productive lands.
“Expo Milano 2015 – explained the Minister of the Local Government of Eritrea, H.E. Woldemichael Abraha Angemichael – is an extraordinary platform on which to share experiences and best practices. The theme reflects the main challenge our Country has been striving to achieve for some time now: finding solutions to fight water scarcity”.
Along with the Minister of Eritrea, Bruno Antonio Pasquino and the Sole Commissioner delegated by the Government for Expo Milano 2015, Giuseppe Sala attended the National Day. “We welcomed Eritrea’s decision to participate in the Arid Zones Cluster”, said Pasquino. “Expo Milano 2015 is a very important opportunity for presenting the best solutions in terms of food security and environmental sustainability. And Eritrea has something to say about these topics, thanks to its experience and its smart use of water resources”, he added.
The event on Sunday was preceded by two seminars promoted by Eritrea: one on the production of cereals in the country – specifically the farrum Triticum Dicoccun – a wheat which, after being out of production for over a century, has being brought back for farming, and on an innovative method of cooking, known as Mogogò Adhanet.
The Eritrean community of Milan enthusiastically came to Expo Milano 2015 to celebrate the National Independence Day which falls on May 24. The national parade was a moment of connection, not only between the institutional event and the meeting at the Arid Zones Cluster, but also of brotherhood with the whole Exhibition Site: in a flurry of colored umbrellas, drums, dances and applauses, the Eritrean Delegation paraded through the photographs and smiles of the thousands of visitors already lining the Decumano.
“In the last few years Eritrea has done a lot –said the Ambassador of Eritrea in Italy Fessahazion Pietros– this means that anyone who goes to Eritrea today, hoping to observe and understand the country, directly and not by word-of-mouth, can do so. We have built large and small roads and dams, and wells too. Today, if you travel through Eritrea you see a water basin behind every village. Women no longer walk five, ten, twenty kilometres to get water, because now they have it just two hundred meters away. The government created this possibility. It’s a sort of second liberation. We hope that the world will pick up on this opportunity and understand it. This is why we are here at Expo Milano 2015”. (FM/VI May 26, 2015)