Wacheera remembered the way her grandmother’s voice had dropped into something softer, heavier. “When they finally came, they were few. We welcomed them with open hands and warm food. We believed they were only passing through. But little by little, they planted their feet and their flags. And before we knew it, we were the ones asking for space on land that remembered only our footsteps.”

Spanning 69 years, Rough Silk traces the life of George Auko—a man whose very birth feels steeped in myth. When Achieng Nyongalo gives birth beneath the Otho tree, her blood feeding into the soil as she takes her last breath, Auko’s life begins as hers ends. It is a moment that feels less like coincidence and more like design—an intervention of Juok, the unseen hand that shapes destiny in Luo cosmology.

Panellists shared how social media has made us have “brain rot”. It has shaped our perceptions and ideologies and made us rely on small talk and conversations that don’t build but rather take away our knowledge.

In many ways, the festival became a space where women’s contributions to liberation movements were repositioned from the margins to the centre. Rather than appearing as secondary figures within nationalist narratives, women were discussed as organisers, strategists, educators, and custodians of collective memory

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.