Travel the world with your children through these beautiful children’s books about West Africa! Below you will find picture books about Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger. They range from biographies and folk tales to modern stories about life in West Africa today. Share your favorites in the comments!
The low literacy rate in Africa can be attributed to a few things: lack of adequate teacher training and overall investment in training, where teachers teach what they were taught as children rather than keeping up with the evolution of education, access to tools and reading resources for children as a result of poverty, and poor school literacy programs and curriculum planning.
There are, however, organizations and creative initiatives that have taken the future of Africa’s children into their own hands. These spaces have prioritised children’s education in literacy and are empowering little ones across the continent with books.
These are just five of the organisations that are teaching Africa’s children to read, and how you can help them.
il y a beaucoup de lumières, de sourires et des univers à conquérir derrière chaque livre que nous lisons. Jules Renard estime que « chacune de nos lectures laisse une graine qui germe », et qui sait pour quel lendemain ? Le livre est un petit bonheur qu’on n’offre pas très souvent, pourtant il ne coute pas plus cher qu’une soirée en boite de nuit, que le moins stylé des téléphones ou encore un vêtement tendance.
The problem is that, unfortunately, those that write in African languages remain invisible, their works are hardly ever reviewed or translated. Publishing venues are limited and getting published is one of the most infuriating challenges of writing in African languages. There are hardly any publishing houses devoted to African languages. So writers in African languages are writing against great odds: no publishing houses, no state support, and with national and international forces aligned against them. Prizes are often given to promote African literature but on the condition that the writers don’t write in African languages. »
– Nanda Dyssou, An Interview with Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Los Angeles Review of Books, 23 April 2017
While it’s important for everyone to read literature from around the world, if you are of African descent, it’s a great idea to give your child an understanding of the various cultures in the continent early in their life. This is especially important if you don’t live in the continent currently. With that being said, here are five African children’s books that we recommend.
The problems that readers encounter when visiting libraries are legion and diverse: the lack of updating of the collection, the absence of online information on the collections, the absence of books on African realities, the lack of professional librarians, the bad faith of some readers and the commodification of reading services.
Skin We Are In is a landmark South African book for children (and grown-ups) on the subject of skin colour. Published in 2018, it was co-authored by an artist and a scientist, both South African luminaries – the author Sindiwe Magona and the anthropologist and palaeobiologist Nina Jablonski. Here they talk about how – and why – the book came about.
Dans cet article, il n’était pas question pour moi de développer tous les effets positifs des jeux vidéo, mais de fournir certains éléments de réflexions qui pourront permettre aux adultes, qui ne retiennent que les impacts négatifs en ce qui concerne les jeux, de voir les jeux vidéo autrement, de prendre les manettes (eux-mêmes) ou de laisser leurs enfants jouer.
Au cours du vingtième siècle, la bande dessinée a connu un développement lent mais continu sur l’ensemble du continent africain. Si les éditeurs et les groupes de presse ont joué un rôle essentiel et positif dans la diffusion de ce média, un autre facteur essentiel, bien que peu étudié par ailleurs, est à prendre en compte : les bandes dessinées de commande. Si le recours régulier de la publicité à des strips ou des pages de bande dessinée pour vanter les mérites de tel ou tel produit remonte à l’époque coloniale, un phénomène remontant aux années 90 est de plus en plus apparent : les bandes dessinées de sensibilisation, devenues la principale source de revenus pour nombre d’auteurs du continent. Etat des lieux sur un pan méconnu du métier de dessinateur de BD Africain.
Quel que soit le type de traduction que vous demandez (médicale, technique, juridique, pharmaceutique, financière, etc.), la manière dont elle sera fournie (traduction orale ou écrite), sous quelle forme (en ligne ou hors ligne) et auprès de qui vous la commandez (à un traducteur privé ou à une agence spécialisée), le calcul du coût dépend de plusieurs facteurs