It was 'good morning' the usual way
sounded just the same
full of energy
of life's promises
nothing could be guessed on that 14th day 2014.

You downed your cup of tea
your piece of yam
you kept some
knowing tomorrow was yet to come
you smiled your see-you-later smile.

Evening came
you did not return
a day passed, days
months
Today 14th April 2015 makes it a year.

The yam has grown moulds
like the waiting in our hearts and longing in our eyes
as we reach for a flicker of possibility
buried under the silence that surrounds your disappearance
we refuse the moulds to cover it...

Today we light a candle
not in memory my sisters - no
we light this candle to stand with you
we light this candle to keep the flicker brighter
we light this candle to evoke spirits of resilience and justice.

(My heart goes out to each single girl,
to each single parent of these girls and
their entire families.)

* Hilda Twongyeirwe is Executive Director, Uganda Women Writers Association - FEMRITE.

The donation follows an invitation to several institutions in Africa and elsewhere to express an interest in acquiring the collection, and submit a plan for the continuation and hosting of the database. After careful review of all submissions, Kwara State University Library in Malete, Ilorin, Nigeria, was chosen.

Celebrated Kenyan poet Shailja Patel captures the disturbing reality of a country where violent bloodletting has become normal. Everyone is momentarily paralysed with shock; next, state terror targets the vulnerable; but soon life goes on. Yet the nation is scarred forever.

Writer and human rights activist Valentina A. Mmaka tries to put into words the utterly hearbreaking massacre of young lives – real human beings, not just numbers - at Garissa University College in Kenya last week. Irritatingly, mass murders are a part of Kenya’s history.

There is insidious fear across Kenya from rising costs of living, rampant spectacular crime, bizarre terrorist events and a sense that the future is clouded. The fear is making people angry and hateful, as depicted in this fictional account.

The book is a tale of opportunism, spoliation, misappropriation and dispossession. The arrival of Chinese in Africa in drovees lately is arguably the latest chapter in a very long narrative of empire building through emigration.

Besides giving a good general description of what it is like to grow up in a mud hut in the rural African countryside, with barely enough money to eat or to attend school, the book also describes the unique culture and political setting of Swaziland, Africa’s last absolute monarchy.

Bangui,
Who could remember to smile
when those guns fed us lead
In Bangui our hearts bled
Crying for sanity
Bangui,
Who remember's Stanley's fatal whip on our backs
Chopped arms, now firearms in Bangui
Lighting Ubangi with flowing dead blood
Bangui never dies
Determined to silence the ghosts of Brazza
Leopold, Bozize and Bokassa
I stand bold with African pride
I have died many times before
Made to kiss the aroma of mother Congo
And still I germinate
Bangui, I am a seed
I will never die
I will never wither
I will gyrate in the rhythms of Cavacha, Rhumba and Samba
Let the dust of the boots drown in Ubangi
Bangui

'Strive to be Happy' is an inspirational work replete with didactic messages. Throughout this book Lamnyam’s voice sounds like that of a quiet peace-maker calling for non-resistance as a modus operandi needed to ward off the pangs of pain occasioned by social injustice, exploitation and disenfranchisement.

Unbeknown to many people, some powerful conservative Somali clerics are strong-arming famous musicians into ending and disowning their own musical careers, on spurious claims that the music is prohibited in Islam. Music is very important in Somali culture and in Islamic traditions. Extremists must not be allowed to go on with this senseless eradication of heritage.

The Gambia, ruled for the last 20 years by an eratic and brutal tyrant, is one of the worst places on earth to work as a journalist. One prominent journalist who lived under the Yahya Jammeh regime has placed on record his own harrowing experiences and those of others – plus insights into media history and operations in the tiny West African nation.

Nigeria is not lacking in literary talent, yet there still aren't many Nigerian books freely available in the country, and they aren't quite as easy to find as foreign books. However, all is far from lost: There is a movement that is breathing new life into Nigerian storytelling.

The new $15,000 literary prize will be awarded to the best Kiswahili unpublished manuscripts or books published within two years of the award year across the categories of fiction/short fiction collection, poetry and memoir and graphic novels.

There is a lot going on in Africa: Boko Haram crisis in Nigeria, the Ebola crisis, armed conflict in South Sudan, rhetoric of ‘Africa arising’, the dramatic exit of Blaise Compaore, presidential elections... Many of these are issues that tend to make people get too serious and stressed. Uganda’s star comedia Anne Kansiime is offering people some respite.

Retired Professor Hirji, a book addict, has bought copies with frayed, half-torn or missing pages. He has on occasion received via mail a book other than the one ordered. But buying a fake book? Only in Dar es Salaam!

cc pz How much are Tanzania’s artists giving voice to the varied and changing cultural landscape of identity, values and beliefs in this globally influenced but locally anchored, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world?

Protest art may not necessarily spur revolutions, but as a change agent its immense value lies in speaking truth to power. It is also educational, cathartic and empowering in situations of injustice.

Ugandan women rights activist Hope Turyasingura is dead. Turyasingura is former chairperson of Center for Domestic Violence Prevention. This poem celebrates her.

The poetry is a journey into the quest for self-determination. Resonating with Ngugi's ‘Re-membering Africa’, Onsando's text focuses on selves that constitute Africa's dismembered self.

A new book called ‘The Coming Revolution’, argues that, contrary to the dominant narrative in western media, the South African revolution remains incomplete.