Traditionally, the nyatiti was reserved for initiated men. For a young Japanese woman to not only learn it but master it was unthinkable.

Social media has been transformative. It’s allowing Africans to reclaim stories in real-time—whether it’s TikTokers teaching indigenous languages or Instagram creators reviving ancient textile traditions. Technology is helping bypass traditional gatekeepers, making it easier to tell our stories from our perspective.

His Only Wife by Peace Adzo Medie begins with Elikem absent on his wedding day, represented instead by his brother Richard. It is a story that peels back the curtain on marriage, family pressure, and the politics of beauty in African society.

This book is utterly charming, laugh‑out‑loud funny, and deeply moving. It portrays resilience — how children raised by grandparents in the countryside, by a nanny in the city and then at boarding school, with little parental presence, can grow up self‑reliant and perceptive. It’s a voice seldom heard in children’s literature and one that heralds a new and powerful wave of African storytelling by Africans, for Africans

Kinyatti, who was himself taken prisoner for six and a half years in 1982 for writing on the Mau Mau movement during Daniel arap Moi’s regime, intimates the hard conditions and torture prisoners faced.

The challenging aspect of children’s books, says Robert Dersley, is timing. One can throw so much love into the illustrations it can never end.