Kendeka Lecture is an arm of Kendeka Prize for African Literature and aims at promoting reading and writing in Africa. Through the Lecture, issues affecting writing and reading in Africa will be discussed in detail and from a stage with a wider audience.

Kendeka Prize for African Literature, the Mother to the Lecture, is a literary contest of the best stories written by people with citizenship to an African country. It is one of the platforms from which Africans have been telling their stories.

 Through participation in this contest, new talents have been discovered and when natured, these will be great writers perhaps following in the footsteps of Ngugi Wa Thiongo, Chimamanda Ngozi Andichie, among others.

We believe that these new writers will bring to our libraries, books about drought, flooding, locusts, hunger, Covid 19 and many other issues threating the future of Africa.  As they write about the calamities afflicting us, we also believe that they will write positive and uplifting stories about Africa: They will write about the beauty of our people and our colorful cultural practices, they will write about Timbuktu, they will write about Equity Bank and Mount Kenya University and of how they grew from humble backgrounds into major institutions in Africa.  

When we read such stories, we shall have traveled to some of the farthest corners of the continent, sailed on River Nile, beheld the sight and heard the rumbling of Victoria Falls, climbed Mt. Kenya, and even walked on our beaches.

Who is going to write about Africa and not forget to mention the spring that for ages supplied water to his or her village but is now no more leaving behind a dry valley? This can best be done by a writer who grew up in that village!

This is why we urgently need a new breed of African writers, writers with a passion of issues around us and affecting our day to day life. These new army of writers is what Kendeka Prize for African Literature, through Kendeka Lecture, aims at stirring.

 Through the prize, we ignite the creation of reading material which our people can easily identify with. This will not only help in solving many of the challenges we face as a continent, but will also be a catalyst in building prosperous communities.