On Saturday 19 September, Jama Musse Jama, Director of the Hargeysa Cultural Centre, was in Nairobi to speak on a panel at the Storymoja festival ‘How Books and Art Create and Propagate National Values’. The Hargeysa Cultural Centre was founded in 2014 to support the revival of Somali culture and arts. The Cultural Centre provides a unique and welcoming space in Hargeysa for young and old to share and enjoy story telling, poetry, music, dance, drama, graphic arts and photography. The Cultural Centre is also the host of the Hargeysa International Book Fair, hosted annually since 2007 and one of the largest literary fairs in East Africa. The Rift Valley institute supports the Hargeysa Cultural Centre through a grant from the European Union.

At Storymoja, Jama was in discussion with Enock Onkoba and Boniface Mwangi. The pane took place on Saturday 19 September from 4PM-6PM in the Yetu tent, at the National Arboretum. The Rift Valley Institute’s Nairobi Forum is a sponsor of the 2015 Storymoja Festival. The full programme of this year’s festival can be seen here.