Celebrating women’s voices in Botswana and African literature

Kenanao and Keikantse Phele are two sisters that are celebrating diverse storytellers in Africa through their non-profit organisation: Gaborone Book Festival Trust (GBF). Join us as we learn how they are transforming the minds of readers and future writers.  

—

Last year the Covid-19 pandemic introduced a bigger scale of virtual events.

In-person events became distant memories where the bustling experiences of live music, fresh air and the simple pleasure of face-to-face interactions lived strictly in the mind.

“Since we started the Gaborone Book Festival five years ago, we have always hosted a physical festival every single year,” Co-founder Keikantse Phele tells AWiM News, “when the pandemic hit, we had to make the temporary shift to online.”

Two and a half years later, the Botswana-based book festival returned to its full glory with an in-person event this September.

“We were so excited to have people from Gaborone and outside of Botswana join us, once again,” Kenanao Phele expresses, “attendees were able to meet their favourite and new authors, buy books and engage in different conversations.”

Just as the feeling and smell of a fresh paperback book bring a different type of joy to book lovers, face-to-face book festivals offer an immersive and unforgettable experience.

In Botswana, they have also been very rare: “A few years back, my sisters and I were chatting in a WhatsApp group chat about some book festivals that were happening in South Africa,” Kenanao explains “we realised how we had never attended or heard of book festival happening in Botswana before.”

The lack of Literary events was not the only issue they identified.

“Writers in Botswana have also been very underrepresented,” she adds, “and there are so many variables that come with the scarce opportunities they have in the industry.”

Seeing multiple gaps within the book industry in Botswana, the Phele sisters took the matter into their own hands and founded the Gaborone Book Festival Trust (GBF) in 2017 as a means to close the gaps disparaging African literature writers.

“Even though we had all started reading books from a young age, it was a full circle moment of realisation that our exposure to African literature and Botswana authors had been very limited too,” Kenanao states.

Bessie Head and Barolong Seboni are two authors whose creative and academic works in history have deemed them the pioneers of Botswana Literature.

In an interview with Medium, Mr Seboni shared some of the ongoing issues within the book industry: “In Botswana there are so many people who are writing novels and short stories, but a lot of people don’t know about it because our media doesn’t talk about it.”

While one of the main aims and values of GBF is to promote engagement with literary works across Africa, it also serves to celebrate and share the voices of storytellers in the African diaspora who often go unrecognised.

“I have met so many amazing writers from Botswana and when I ask them ‘Where can I get your book?’ they always tell me they are self-published,” Kenanao says.

Self-publishing can be a challenging aspect of the book industry with traditional publishing adding competition when it comes to visibility and opportunities.

A study by FicShelf highlighted disparities between female and male authors, stating how male authors receive more contacts and publicity than their female counterparts when publishing their books.

However, Guardian book reporter, Alison Flood, states that: “Self-publishing helps women to break through the book industry’s glass ceiling.”

As a non-profit organisation founded by women and run by women, gendered issues within African literature are part of the work GBF does: “One of the key factors included in all of our programmes is diversity and inclusion,” Keikantse states, “ We love hearing from women and male writers in the industry because representation to us is everything and so we make it a mission to represent all writers fairly.”

This is not only limited to gender or adults but also children.

All year long the trust runs school outreach programmes to engage primary school children, who come from low-income, indigenous and highly populated regions in the local community and outside of Botswana. Passionate and committed volunteers from universities and recent graduates also come along to help with the programmes.

In February GBF ran an event centred around the ‘World Read Aloud’ day for their reading programme which has been growing over the years.

“For us, it’s very important that what we are building a culture of reading in Botswana that starts at the grassroots levels as well.”

The Phele sisters also partnered with the University of East Anglia (UEA) recently, to host a series of creative writing workshops to cultivate the next generation of children’s authors.

“When the UEA asked to collaborate with us, we were so happy as this is the work we have already been doing and actually looking to expand,” Kenanao shares, “one of the workshops they funded was about ‘Writing for children’ which was important for us because we want to see more people writing for children in Africa.”

Passionate about shifting narratives within Africa and social issues, Kenanao believes it is important for people in society to hear different perspectives.

“When I was younger, I was part of the debate team so I would always spend my afternoons in the library, reading books and newspapers to research different views on various topics.”

Now with a specialist background in Marketing and Communications, she uses her skills in digital media to share the perspectives of African authors and their books.

“We want to showcase to the world that anything you can find in western literature, you can also find in African Literature too,” Keikantse adds.

When the three sisters were attending Motetshwane Primary School in Serowe – a small village in Botswana, their love of books formed instantly with the help of a mobile library that would come every month: “I always remember the day when the mobile library came to our school and I picked up this huge book called ‘Long Walk to freedom’ by Nelson Mandela,” Keikantse recalls “ his book was my first encounter with books and ever since then it has been a never-ending journey.”

She adds: “In the last seven years of reading and buying more books, I have also become very intentional with the books that I read by seeking more African stories written by African authors.”

GBF has created a community of storytellers and conversation makers from different backgrounds, ages and gender across Africa.

Kenanao and Keikantse have not been alone in the meaningful work their trust is doing as they have also been joined by numerous volunteers.

“We have a strong base of volunteers who are always willing to help with our programmes and are constantly supporting us in our mission as they believe in transforming the African literature scene too,” Keikantse says proudly.

The only challenge the team at GBF have had to face since starting is funding for their activities, but it has not held them back.

“Financial support is the only thing that has been a challenge for us,” Kenanao states, “apart from that our organisation has been welcomed across the continent by other festival directors outside of Botswana who share with us new and emerging authors for us to showcase.”

Utilising skills from both sisters’ professions with Keikantse also having experience as a legal officer, both are determined to fight for their mission and see it to its completion.  Since 2018, the GBF annual festival has never failed to happen.

“We always put our best foot forward and for me, it has been such an affirming journey,” says Kenanao.

In the near future, the two co-founders hope to elevate the work they are doing by researching matters on children’s literacy deeper: “What we don’t have at the moment is an element of research, so we want to get to a space where we build a fully functioning research arm that can help us move to a position where we can influence policy,” explains Keikantse.

GBF’s future research will help to improve representation and learning from the early literacy space and up, so that future and current generations of writers can be heard, seen and celebrated.

“It has been an incredible walk with GBF so far,” Keikantse tells AWiM, “every single year, the book festival grows bigger each time, more than we could have ever thought it would.”

Grateful and excited to host the next annual GBF celebration, the Phele sisters are continuing to shine light on the colourful voices of Botswana and the rest of Africa.

This article is part of African Women in Media (AWIM) Graduate Trainee Programme in collaboration with Fojo Media Institute