This archive report was first published on 21 December 2021.
On December 21, 2021, CNN International aired an episode of Inside Africa that highlighted the work of Book Bunk, a Kenyan organization restoring libraries and promoting African storytelling.
Founded in 2017 by Angela Wachuka and Wanjiru Koinange, Book Bunk partnered with the Nairobi city county government to renovate three libraries in the city.
The organization's mission is to decolonize knowledge and promote African storytelling by selecting books that reflect the experiences and perspectives of Africans.
At the McMillian Memorial Library, Nairobi's oldest library, opened in 1931, the majority of the book collection had been selected by British settlers. Book Bunk's team catalogued over 130,000 books and began the process of selecting which ones to keep and which to remove.
Wachuka stated, 'We'd like to build a special collection that favors writing by and about Africans, the black experience, the diaspora, in its all-encompassing ways.'
Book Bunk is also hosting its own literary festival inside the renovated children's library to support the Kenyan and African literary industry.
For Koinange, her work with Book Bunk is deeply linked to her life as a writer. In 2020, the organization's imprint published her first novel, The Havoc of Choice, which became a bestseller in Kenya.
Book Bunk hopes to renovate libraries across Kenya and Africa in the future, promoting African storytelling and decolonizing knowledge.
