In the suburbs of Nairobi lies the Karen Village, an art, culture heritage centre. People from many countries in Africa and from across the world gathered here to celebrate Africa Day.
Africa Day is an annual commemoration of the establishment of the Organization of African Unity on May 25, 1963, when 32 independent African states signed the founding charter in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Edwin Kariuki is the organizer of the Africa Day 2019 celebration in Karen Village. He organized similar events in South Africa between 2016 and 2018. He says upon returning to Kenya in December 2018, he realised that people in Nairobi did not really celebrate Africa Day and felt it was time to do something similar at home.
“The idea was to have a community of South Africans, Nigerians, Ghanaians, Kenyans, Rwandese coming to showcase their culture, dances, music, fashion, art, food and ideas,” Kariuki said.
Kariuki believes that Africa Day should be a day to talk about issues affecting Africa and its future. He hopes to bring together and inspire afro-centric people.
However, it appears that the stumbling block to celebrating African unity comes from within. Kariuki lamented about the apparent lack of interest among Africans, and residents of Nairobi in particular, in marking Africa Day.
“The challenge is we had more international people who confirmed they would be coming and very few African communities apart from the ones we reached out to. We are supposed to be having more African embassies or organisations confirming they are coming than international ones. This is Africa Day; it is for Africans,” Kariuki said.
He is not alone, his sentiments are shared by Adrian Jankowiak, the Nairobi Design Week (NDW) founder, who was a guest at the event.
“The embassies could come together. There must be quite a few African embassies here. They may be doing their own separate events but there is no reason why this day couldn’t be actually something to bring those diplomats together,” Jankowiak quipped.
Kariuki adds Africa Day needs to have a continental impact whereby African leaders or their representatives are present and can hold forums where real problem solving is done. He is confident that the 2019 event is just the start of better things in Nairobi.
“When you have people, who believe in a cause and who are passionate about Africa, even having an Africa Day event in 2020 will be so much easier because you will be having people who are coming for the cause. I want to rekindle that fire that I have seen in other parts of the world,” Kariuki said.
Kariuki also says the importance of Africa Day has been overshadowed by the majority of the African youth who have been influenced a lot by Western culture.
“The first thing, I think, is decolonising of African minds, letting them appreciate their own culture and making them have a sense of pride. Until you do that, we still have a long way to go; in the next 20-30 years, you will be having Africa day and this place is going to be full of people from Europe,” he said.
The common belief among participants of the event is that it is time for the world to understand why some people are passionate about Africa and its different cultures.
“The world is familiar with North American culture, European culture and it’s about time it became familiar with African culture; that is food, music, design, arts and performance,” NDW’s Jankowiak said.
