Online Reporter
Golden Sibanda
Zimbabwe will give the world a cultural handshake when a 12-member ensemble delivers a 40-minute-long cultural performance during Zimbabwe’s National Day celebrations at Expo 2025 Osaka in Japan, next week.
National Day celebrations at the Expo 2025 Osaka are a significant opportunity for participating countries to showcase their culture, promote international friendship, and foster global cooperation.
The events allow participating nations to highlight their unique identities and engage in cultural exchanges with other participants and visitors.
Zimbabwe’s National Day, July 16, 2025, will feature a variety of activities, including an official ceremony, cultural displays, a business forum, and a musical concert.
Held as part of Zimbabwe’s participation in the six-month-long global expo, the event will showcase the country’s rich cultural heritage and economic potential.
Titled “Great Zimbabwe”, the ensemble’s cultural performance will take the world on a theatrical journey and a profound artistic narrative of Zimbabwe’s cultural heritage, showcasing the country’s collective identity, past, present and future.
The performance is a celebration of the true spirit of the Zimbabwean people told through vibrant dance, music, movement, and theatrical storytelling interwoven with mbira music and captivating traditional dances such as amabhiza, mhande, jerusalema, isitshikitsha, muchongoyo and mbakumba.
The ensemble is not a singular group, but a composite of talented artists picked from the country’s 10 provinces, as part of a deliberate and profound reflection of the Government’s devolution agenda of ensuring that “no one and no place is left behind.
The 2025 World Expo in Osaka, Japan, scheduled to run from April 13 to October 13, 2025, features participation from 158 countries and regions, along with 7 international organisations, making it the largest number of international participants ever seen at an expo held in Japan.
Themed “Designing Future Society for Our Lives”, the event seeks to explore how countries can create a sustainable and resilient future through global collaboration and the sharing of ideas and technologies.
Zimbabwe’s participation in the global expo aims to promote Brand Zimbabwe through showcasing the country’s social and cultural diversity as well as promoting domestic tourism, investment, and trade opportunities.
Zimbabwe’s theme at the Osaka 2025 Expo is “Beyond the Limits”.
The theme is inspired by the country’s Vision 2030 aspirations of achieving upper-middle income status and highlights the nation’s resilience and potential in overcoming various challenges, including sanctions, natural disasters, and the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Government appointed Mr Allan Majuru, the chief executive officer of ZimTrade, as its Commissioner General for Expo 2025 Osaka.
Speaking during the special preview of the performance on Friday, National Arts Council of Zimbabwe (CEO) Mr Napoleon Nyanhi said the production was steeped in symbolism, drawing from the heart of Zimbabwe’s rich history and diverse voices from the country’s 10 provinces.
“We chose the title Great Zimbabwe because it is more than a monument, it is a message. In the 11th century, Great Zimbabwe was not just a royal city, it was a centre of industry, commerce and architecture.
“It is the clearest reminder that Zimbabwe has always been a nation of builders, of artisans, of traders, connected to the global economy long before the modern era.
“The stonewalls of Great Zimbabwe were not cemented by mortar, but by craftsmanship and collective strength.”It is the same spirit of building Zimbabwe stone by stone, brick by brick that this performance celebrates.
dance, every drumbeat, every costume tells the story ‘Beyond the limits’.
As we look to Expo 2025 Osaka, this performance will be our cultural handshake with the world. It will showcase Zimbabwe’s creativity, cultural depth and historical pride to a global audience.
“More than that, it is a platform for cultural diplomacy, an opportunity to position Zimbabwe as a culturally confident, economically ambitious and globally connected nation,” he said.
Mr Nyanhi added that the performance was not just entertainment, but a strategic act of storytelling, showing the world that Zimbabwe was “not a country of yesterday’s greatness, but a people of enduring innovation and strength”.
