The voices of Africa and the African Diaspora can now be easily accessed via smart and feature phones on badilishapoetry.
The Badilisha Poetry X-Change formed its online platform in 2012, and now features 350 poets from 22 countries in Africa and the African diaspora. Each week two new poets are added to the collection.
The largest archive of audio casts by African poets in the world, Badilisha Poetry X-Change houses poet profiles, interviews and podcast poetry readings in multiple African languages.
Linda Kaoma, Badilisha X-Change Project Manager, stated that; “Whilst, the Badilisha website has been widely embraced internationally, it is essential that we are accessible to the continent and mobile is obviously central to achieving this.”
Mobile phones are at the forefront of an information revolution in Africa; inspiring fast-moving change in banking, retail, education, healthcare, agriculture and now enabling the people of this continent to hear their very own poetic voices.
“External perspectives of Africa can be very limiting so it is vital that the people of Africa contribute to the creation of their own aural story and the formation of their own visual imagery,” says Kaoma,
“Badilisha is a safe, expressive space to explore these ideas.” By 2015, Africa is expected to have 127 million smart phones in circulation and overall, the number of mobile phones will swell to 1 billion. Africa’s largest mobile phone market is Nigeria with 120 million mobile subscribers alone. (Informa Telecoms & Media).
Continues Kaoma; “Africa’s cultural and literary reach is still disproportionate to its population and talent. For example, only 2% of all the published books in the world are penned by African authors.
There is an urgent need for accessible programmes on diverse platforms to give the Continent a creative and cultural voice, through Badilisha we hope to contribute to this growing and evolving African perspective.”
To celebrate the launch of Badilisha’s Poetry X-Change for mobile, Badilisha will be hosting a series of crowd-sourced poetry events on Twitter. Follow @badilishapoetry for more.
Staff Writer
