“Building With Music” proves to be a cutting-edge project in respecting Mozambican values, enhancing local cultural heritage and developing skills and opportunities in the cultural sphere. From February 2024 to the present, I have had the opportunity to participate in the project several times. I quickly realized that this initiative went far beyond simply achieving a goal: it was a real practical case study, combining research and direct experience (input), followed by concrete analysis of the results and their impact (output).

The activities I carried out were significant to my career but also to the careers of those I met in the process. Mozambique is the second territory I started working with in Africa, and I can say that it is becoming my third home, after Italy and Senegal.

I started in February 2024, in Maputo, with intensive tracks on entrepreneurship in music, aimed initially at artists and managers. From March to September 2024, the course was carried on in an online format, so that it was accessible to the entire community of Mozambican artists and professionals. In February 2025, I offered the same in-person course again, both at the Eduardo Mondlane University (ECA) in Maputo, with a focus, this time, on professors, music educators, and artists, and at the Casa Da Cultura in Inhambane, where it was aimed, instead, at artists and music professionals.

The experiences cannot be compared because they are declined in different contexts: despite being the same territory, Mozambique has quite marked cultural and infrastructural diversity-especially in the relationship between the Capital and the Provinces. Not only the language is different but also the approaches to the idea of entrepreneurship, music economy, sociality and community.

The most stimulating goal for me is definitely the development of new relationships and opportunities to be developed locally and internationally, embracing the idea of the Italy-Mozambique-World bridge, born through the knowledge of many local talents and entrepreneurs.
A particularly significant activity was the first edition of the Mozambique Music Hackathon, held in June 2024 in Maputo.

During my last mission, in February 2025, we began actively working on the second edition of the Hackathon, defining new collaborations, preparing surprises, aiming to confirm the expectations generated by the first edition. In fact, our partners and hosts have already announced a greater openness in granting spaces and performance opportunities, both for Mozambican artists and for the winning team of the Hackathon, through their own platforms and festivals.

In short, I would like to write a summary of current activities, but it is impossible to fit on one page. So I will only express with conviction the effectiveness of the project in its developments, although there is no shortage of setbacks and disappointments, such as the lack of a law regulating copyright and, at times, the lack of collaboration among artists that prevents them from enforcing their rights.

But, in little more than a year, the project has developed a collective consciousness about the issues and gaps in the music-culture ecosystem and mobilized its participants, directing them to an entrepreneurial aspect of culture, inspiring them to think innovatively about context-declinable solutions, internationalizing the area with its heritage. The greatest satisfaction is to see the dignity of work in culture respected, even and especially in an economic sense, and the importance of cooperation within the ecosystem itself, as well as internationally. I myself have learned and included in my work new points of view with respect to approaches to the market and music, roles and crafts, platforms and ideas.

We will continue to sow seeds together with AGAPE toward a more dynamic ecosystem, hoping to leave a common legacy in the hands of new generations who will not only reap the benefits of the project and its impact, but continue to sow seeds and do better and better.

We are looking forward to:

• the second edition of the Music Hackathon in Maputo at the end of August 2025;
• The visit to Durban (South Africa) at the partner festival The Music Imbizo, right after our Hackathon;
• 1° capacity building in music business in Nampula and Quelimane in September 2025;
• the presence of the project with a booth and some representatives from Mozambique at WOMEX 2025 in Tampere, Finland;
• the next Linecheck 2025 in Milan in November, with the winners of the Music Hackathon 2025;
• and… NO MORE SPOILERS!

I thank Valentina and AGAPE for believing in me since that fateful day in Lisbon during WOMEX 2022.

Silvia Nocentini