Library Of Africa and The African Diaspora

Badji Alfousseynou lives in Dakar, Senegal. Trained as a volunteer community development practitioner, he has been active for more than twenty years, supporting local development initiatives, particularly working with youth and women in rural communities across Senegal. He has also contributed to mentoring and educating children through various educational programmes and holiday camps. Throughout his journey, he has experimented with artistic and cultural tools as pedagogical methods for self-knowledge and personal transformation, aiming to contribute to his community’s transformation. Today, he specialises in organisational development and the design of context-adapted operational strategies. From an early age, he developed a Pan-African consciousness shaped by an awareness of the historical experiences of Black people, marked by slavery, colonisation, and segregation, particularly in the United States and South Africa. The scholarship of Cheikh Anta Diop, the thought and activism of Malcolm X, and works such as Roots by Alex Haley deepened his indignation at historical injustices and strengthened his sense of pride in his identity. Through his engagement with grassroots Pan-African groups, he has helped inspire a new generation of Pan-African activists in Senegal, in collaboration with organisations across the sub-region. In 2019, he founded the Bureau of Research and Strategic Studies Octagone, and since early 2025 he has focused fully on its strategic development.

Orake Akpet, better known as Raks, is a multidisciplinary creative dedicated to understanding stories and the varying ways art and media intersect and impact our lives. With a Bachelor’s Degree in Media and Communication, she has dedicated her life to pursuing her love for storytelling. Her passion lies at the intersection of art, identity and media. She is currently developing her practice in visual arts and mixed media. Instagram: @raks_ruminations on IG and Raksthefirst on other platforms.

Sagou Banou is a Malian director and assistant director, born and raised in Bamako. Passionate about cinema since childhood, he moved to Ouagadougou in 2018 to attend the Higher Institute of Image and Sound (ISIS-SE), where he earned a bachelor’s degree in directing in 2021. He is currently pursuing a Master’s degree at the same institution. His first student film, My Lucky Day (2020), won First Prize in the “African Film School Films” category at FESPACO 2021. In 2023, he directed The Oath of Boukary, his final film for his bachelor’s degree, which won Best Student Film at the Dakar Court International Film Festival 2025 and was selected for FESPACO 2025. That same year, his feature film project Waiting for the Harvest, produced by Future Films, was selected for the Ouaga Film Lab, where it received the South Writing Prize. This distinction enabled him to participate in the South Writing workshop 42 and in a residency at the Château de Lavigny in Switzerland. Sagou creates sensitive, committed cinema rooted in contemporary Sahelian realities.

Ursula M. Abanga is a writer, activist, and community organiser whose work sits at the intersections of feminism, sexuality, and collective care. With a strong belief in the power of storytelling, Ursula uses writing and spoken word to affirm minority narratives that are too often erased or silenced. Ursula’s activism is rooted in building communities of safety, joy, and resilience, where people can show up authentically and thrive without fear. Ursula has facilitated conversations on gender justice, bodily autonomy, and mental well-being, often weaving together lived experience, feminist theory, and cultural critique to spark collective reflection. Beyond advocacy, Ursula is passionate about nurturing spaces of healing, where art, dialogue, and care practices intersect to challenge oppression and imagine liberatory futures. 
Instagram: @the.verve_

Etienne Benedict, also known as Tben Vox, is a multidisciplinary artist whose work bridges music, visual art, and storytelling. Born and raised in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria, where his creative journey began, his practice is deeply rooted in themes of human experience, authenticity, spirituality, cultural heritage, nature, and environmental consciousness. His music, an Afro-reggae fusion, is expressed through reflective songwriting and acoustic elements that reflect introspection, social awareness, and emotional truth. Projects such as Greenlife (2022) and the PATAN EP (2025) reveal a deep connection between nature, human experience, and spirit, carrying messages of inner truth. As a visual artist, Etienne translates these themes into symbolic forms, notably his green-painted faces, which represent nature and rootedness. His journey has been shaped by key experiences, including the Artvocacy Programme by the Street Project Foundation (2023). His work has been featured in the 70 Years of Music in Nigeria project (2024), curated by PopCentral TV, offering visual interpretations that celebrate Nigerian music’s evolution. Through sound and visuals, his work inspires introspection, evokes nostalgia, and connects deeply, inviting audiences to see themselves and recognise their inner truths. Instagram: @tbenvox

Temidayo Testimony Omali Odey, widely known as Testimony Odey, is a Nigerian multidisciplinary artist working across literature, spoken word, music, film, and painting. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in magazines and journals, including Torch Magazine, Poetry Pause, The FEMINIST Magazine, The Deadlands, Kalahari Review, Brittle Paper, PoeticAfrica, Akéwì Magazine, and others. She is a recipient of the Nigerian Prize for Teen Authors, the inaugural African Teen Writers Awards, the HIASFEST Star Prize, the Wakaso Poetry Prize, the JCIN UNIBEN Ten Emerging Leaders and Legacy Award, and the Ten Outstanding Young Persons of the University of Benin Award for Arts, Culture and Creative Expression. She was an artist-in-residence at the Rongo Artist Residency and MAAR, served as a judge for the African Teen Writers Awards, and has been shortlisted for the African Human Rights Short Story Prize, the Brigitte Poirson Literature Prize, and the global Writing Ukraine Prize. She serves as a fiction editor at NWF Journal and the Ugly Collective. As a performance poet, she has performed at venues including TEDxUniversityofBenin, Edo’s International Books and Arts Festival, Dr Steven Akintayo’s Growth Business Conference, and Africa Independent Television (AIT). She enjoys philosophical films and Pan-African conversations. Instagram/ Twitter / Tiktok: @testimonyodey 

Senanu Tord is a Ghanaian documentary filmmaker and journalist working across West, East, and Central Africa. His work explores memory, migration, environmental justice, post-conflict recovery, and cultural preservation, and is featured on global platforms such as the BBC and Voice of America. His practice centres on long-term, character-driven storytelling and archival documentation. Through projects such as Erasure, which documents coastal erosion and disappearing communities in Ghana, and Aftermath, a series that examines the long shadow of war across West Africa, he explores how history is lived, remembered, and contested on the ground. Senanu leads NUNYA (Network for Untold Narratives & Yarning Archives), an initiative that supports communities in documenting and preserving their histories through ethical and accessible storytelling. His work spans journalism, documentary film, and community-based archiving. Instagram: @s4sena  

Basira Rabiu Idris is a Hausa poet and spoken-word artist from Birnin Kebbi in northern Nigeria. Her work explores breath, memory, and resistance across landscapes shaped by migration, climate vulnerability, and cultural erasure. Rooted in Sahelian histories and contemporary realities, her poetry centres on girls, almajirai, and communities negotiating survival with dignity. She is the founder of Zapoetryhouse Foundation and Zapoetryhouse Ltd, where she curates national poetry convenings, facilitates youth workshops, and leads Numfashin Arewa (“Breath of the North”), a civic-poetry initiative that transforms silence into collective dialogue. Her performances and breath-poetry rituals are designed for shared witnessing and publication, reaching more than 3,000 young people across Nigeria. A fellow of Building Bridges for Creatives (Cohort 1), ÌMÍ Creative Lab Residency 2026, National Health Fellows (Birnin Kebbi representative), and Aspire Institute (2025), Basira moves between art and public health, using spoken word as both archive and intervention. For the 2026 West Africa Road Residency, she brings northern Nigerian stories of survival, unity, and refusal to be erased, tracing breath across borders in conversation with Africa and its diaspora. Instagram: @_ceerahedrees and @zapoetryhouse

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