Zomba City Festival was all smiles on Thursday as it got into an alliance partnership with Amaryllis Hotel, Gold Mountain Media Limited and Entertainers Promotions ahead of its fourth edition next month.
The festival to spread across five venues in several stages in the old capital city, will be held from April 26 to 28 2024.
Zomba City Festival Creative Director and founder Laura Schuerwegen applauded the three outfits for partnering with them during a press conference at Amaryllis Hotel in Blantyre, saying the move shows that “we have grown”.
“It is exciting to get support from the three big brands and this means we are making headway to give people the best of a festival,” Laura said.
She said they have made progress in their preparations but was quick to admit that this year they have found it hard to find the budget.
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“But despite not getting enough in terms of budget, we are here with the festival. We are running on a low budget of K28 million out of the ideal budget of K65 million,” Laura said.
She assured festival goers that Zomba City Festival will always strive to offer something different every year and that this year, they are bringing international fashion designers and international artists.
“We are going in the right direction, and we want to grow even in capacity building and connect with the communities as well as scout for more talent,” she said.
Amaryllis General Manager Ramy Waheed said they were happy to partner the festival in a quest to promote Malawi’s tourism and arts and culture.
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“We need to do a lot of efforts to promote Malawi. Zomba is one of the beautiful cities in the country and so, having Zomba City Festival, we thought of coming in as an alliance,” Waheed said.
He said Amaryllis Hotel with its passion to support the creative sector; they were impressed with the inclusivity of the festival.
“It focuses on a lot of things; you talk of poetry, fashion, music, film, visual arts, dance and theatre. This is a combo meal,” Waheed said revealing that they have pumped in K10 million support with other logistics as a pact.
Managing Director of Gold Mountain Media Tapps Bandawe, said the alliance has worked as a team in many events hence coming out to work with Zomba City Festival.
“With Amaryllis Hotel, we have an E-Radio which is like a digital radio, we bring creative content and through it, we want to unleash new talent and we will do that with Zomba City Festival,” Tapps, who is also a producer, said.
