Introducing Ake Arts and Book Festival

Lola Shoneyin is the founder of Book Buzz Foundation and the Director of Ake Festival. She is a Nigerian poet and author born in the city of Ibadan. She is the author of the popular book titled "The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives." She is passionate about art and literature.

Aké holds a series of event every year since its foundation, to celebrate diversity through literature and art. The events aim at showing the importance of telling our own stories, our culture, our art and craft. The events also aim at addressing pressing societal issues across Africa and the world at large.

This marks the opening of Ake festival. Different activities go on to welcome the guests, including, unveiling and presenting the official Ake Arts and Book Festival journal called AKE REVIEW  to the Headliner and other guests.

To capture and showcase the range and diversity of African music, African musicians from different generations are brought together to perform on the Aké Festival stage. The concert headliner is always a veteran performer.  

Dance is an expression of art that is deeply valued at Aké Arts and Book Festival. We love dance performances from the finest African contemporary and cultural dancers.

The first day of the Aké Festival is dedicated to Project Inspire! Nigerian authors and their international counterparts visit primary and secondary schools in and around Ogun State. They read to pupils, conduct writing workshops and discuss the joys of reading.

Aké has a goal of sharing knowledge and supporting emerging voices. Workshops and masterclasses on a range of artistic forms are organised yearly. These classes are facilitated by established practitioners and delivered to interested festival attendees.

Aké Festival attendees cherish this opportunity to meet and
interact with the authors of books they’ve enjoyed, moving from characterisation to plot, from writing style to thematic preoccupation and process. 

This session is a safe space created for guests to discuss important, constructive and sometimes uncomfortable conversations about our bodies, the spaces we occupy, Africa as a home, what it means to be African and our relationship with other parts of the world.

This event is known as the ending fairy as it is often the closing event at Aké Festival. With a cup of plamwine in hand, guests and attendees enjoy poetry from the finest African poets. Only palmwine goes with such creative use of words.

Aké Festival is an immersion of art and culture, so the works of African artists whose artworks are aligned with the theme of the festival are featured during the festival.

This is a very important component of Aké Festival in collaboration with African directors to showcase the best of Nigerian/African talent. An entertaining production is staged.  Aké festival is partial to stage adaptations of well known African novels.

Every year, an important, thought-provoking film is adopted as the ‘Film of the Festival’. After screening the film, a conversation with the film director/producers is hosted. The adopted films mostly show Africa in its true light while promoting diversity and tolerance