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Africa Forward Fest goes beyond the literary festival format
From 7 to 9 May, the Alliance Française de Nairobi will host the fifth edition of Africa Forward Fest, now expanded into a pan-African platform that brings together writers, publishers, translators, and cultural thinkers from across the continent. Timed ahead of the Africa Forward Summit, the festival arrives with a clear sense of intent: To move beyond celebration and into the harder work of connection, circulation, and influence.
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Now I have become a man, he thought. Dear Eve, where is that Ema now so we can play darts together? But his mind could not dwell on one thought for a minute anymore. Why should he waste his time thinking about a woman who could as well be somebody’s wife? With that thought, he started walking automatically, yet hunting with his eyes… or just waiting for the right thought. A pretty, small girl with round features passed by him fast, sounding her heels on the pavement. He thought she walked elegantly and seductively. What about her? He was thinking about her when he collided with a man shoulder-to-shoulder.
Last week, while writing about Joan Thatiah’s Mad Women, I returned again and again to Zawadi, a young woman whose life ends after a clandestine abortion in a residential apartment. This week, reality has caught up with literature. The Court of Appeal in Kenya has overturned the 2022 High Court decision that had recognised access to abortion under limited constitutional circumstances, holding instead that abortion is not a standalone fundamental right under the Constitution of Kenya 2010.
These are not just stories, they are recognisable and lived realities. The topic of abortion remains a hushed one spoken in codes and euphemisms on platforms like TikTok, where creators, anonymous or not, refer to pregnancy as “the stranger in my womb”, quietly building communities of support for women navigating impossible choices.
The CS Interior had termed the exercise an internal affair, which was still at a premature stage, and claimed that bringing the matter to light would only help fan flames of malevolence from the rest of Kenyans.
In a region where loss, resilience, and survival are tightly interwoven, stories such as Rough Silk carry a particular weight. They speak not only to personal journeys, but to collective histories shaped by adversity.
The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights claimed it had received preliminary information from an anonymous witness that the Kenya Defence Forces were, for several weeks, on the offensive towards civilian locals in El Adde before the massacre.
