Library Of Africa and The African Diaspora

Library Of Africa and The African Diaspora (LOATAD), in collaboration with the Harambee Organisation of Black Unity (UK), invites applications from writers and visual artists across West Africa for a landmark creative residency: an 18-day, 3,000-kilometre journey from Accra to Banjul and back, beginning April 2026.

This is not a road trip. It is a radical act of listening, seeing, movement, and memory. Sixty-two years after Malcolm X stood in Accra calling for a global Black organisation, we retrace West Africa’s arteries—not as tourists, but as indigenous cultural cartographers. The residency precedes the Convention of Afrikan People (CAP26) in The Gambia, grounding its political vision in lived experience and creative reflection.

Selected residents will travel through Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau*, and Senegal, engaging with local histories, landscapes, and communities. Along the way, they will respond to curated prompts, gather stories, and produce creative work that will be shared in Banjul and later published in a Pan-African anthology and travelling exhibition.

* N.B. Due to the changing political and security situation on the ground in the region, alternative travel arrangements may be made.