As advocates of books that celebrate African characters and cultures, we get excited whenever we come across organisations that work hard to produce stories that centre around Africans. Here are 4 champions that inspire us.
Nal'ibali
Nal’ibali which means “here’s the story” in isiXhosa is a national reading-for-enjoyment campaign in South Africa. Their vision is to spark children’s potential through storytelling and reading.
Nal’ibali promotes reading and writing in mother tongues because it believes that all children and adults need to understand what they are listening to or reading for it to be meaningful and enjoyable – which is crucial for raising readers. In supporting children to find more ways to root reading and writing habits in their daily lives, Nal’ibali’s main objective is to build a nation of powerful readers and storytellers.
Learn more about Nal’ibali here
MixaKids
MixaKids is a Kenyan digital publishing platform for e-books and other literary content written by children for children. MixaKids is unique in that it gives children the opportunity to create stories and get paid for their writing.
Learn more about MixaKids here
Golden Baobab
Golden Baobab was established to increase African representation in children’s storybooks. It does this through discovering, celebrating and supporting African children’s writers and illustrators through their literary award, the Golden Baobab Prize.
The Prize accepts submissions from writers and illustrators once a year and offers publishing opportunities and skills development to the most talented children’s writers and illustrators to ensure that there is opportunity for more African children’s literature to be created.
Learn more about the Golden Baobab Prize here
Book Dash
Book Dash believes that every child should own one hundred books by the age of five. It brings together creative professionals who volunteer to create new, African books three or four times a year. Anyone can translate the books produced to a language of their choice. They can also print and distribute them at no cost.
Book Dash’s main objective is to create, print and distribute more books to South African children and to show that high-quality in a variety of South African languages can be affordably produced and distributed.
Learn more about Book Dash here.
Be on the look out for part 2 of the list.