 Charles Edward Eumann, the representative or the ambassador for the First Nations people at the Freistad Arts Festival, Koi's son of the Free State, who is also a member of the Hrikwa Council of the Free State. So Charles, thank you very much. Moro. Oh, gee, now I'm stressed. Brof, I didn't recognize you, sorry. For this morning I would like to welcome everyone and for this morning, yes, I feel it's privileged for me to just read a few lines so that everyone can be on the same page. Gaitres. At the dawn of this day I want to start with the most famous words of them all from our former president, Thabo Mbeki. I am an African. I owe my beings to the Koi in the sand. And I want to make a slight change there. I owe my beings to the ancestors of the Koi in the sand, the Hrikwa, the Nama, the Ezekwa, the Inkwa, the Tam, the Tui, all of them, and the Korana. I want to say welcome to everyone from my ancestors. I don't want to show you everything because tomorrow we're going to have a celebration as well. Short that I've written is, at the dawn of the first nation, the Koi in the sand unified together in 1st of April, 2001. When they come together, they reunite their language, they reunite their culture. They went and formed the Koi in the sand. So as we reunite yet again with the different first nations, people from America, people from Australia, people from South Africa, even, yes, people from afar. We want to welcome all the different Koi in the sand. And we want to say thank you to the University of the Free State for embracing us. Thank you for giving us this chance to be here as one again. Today I want to leave you with these words, Elobge Namsa, Elobge Namsa, God is love. Let the spirit of unification unite you and me once again as we go into this journey as one nation, as first nation, as another nation. Like I said yesterday, let's re-embrace who we are. Our strength is in who we are. With those words, I want to welcome you once again to South Africa and to the Free State Art Festival. Thank you. Now I'd like to invite Professor Francis Peterson, who is the head of this university, who makes this all possible, who we want to thank profusely for your enormous commitment and energy towards the programs that we run, but also just your commitment to people and the creativity that they bring to the Free State. Thank you, Prof. Thank you very much, Ricardo. And good morning and welcome to everyone. I should actually say a warm welcome to our campus and to Bloemfontein. I look at the hall and I don't know whether we've got an air conditioning system here, but I think it felt a little bit cold this morning. Did you also feel a little bit cold? So if we haven't got the prayer then I think we should try to get a budget so that we can get this all a little bit warm up in the winter. The annual Free State Art Festival is for us a very special occasion as the university. It's probably one of the highlights in the university calendar. And today I'm not only welcoming visitors across the country to the Bloemfontein campus, but also from those that comes from the rest of the continent, other parts of the world. And I know that we have got visitors from Australia, from the UK, from the rest of the continent, from the States. I also had the privilege to be introduced to the acting ambassador here from the Netherlands. And we in fact are what you would say one nation in the globe. And I would like to welcome you all to our campus. I'm also very proud that the university can be associated with especially the inaugural Pan-African Creative Exchange space. And more so, that is in fact happening here on the Bloemfontein campus. Now PACE aim is to expand the global reach of Africa's arts industry and to contribute to the development of future work on the continent. And for me, the goals as was articulated the three objectives that PACE has been working on currently are also goals that I can associate with a strategy of the University of the Free State. We've got a strategy which we call our engagement with the continent, that we put a lot of effort in to be able to make sure that those linkages are sustainable, that our students have the ability to engage with other cultures on the continent. But we also have an internationalization strategy, where we try to make sure that the work that we are doing on campus, a work that is known outside of the Free State, outside of South Africa, outside of Africa, and to other parts in the world. So I think the continental engagement from within, but also the international global engagement is for us very important. And therefore I can resonate with the objectives of PACE to the strategy of the University of the Free State. When evident to our global reach, we, in fact, starting tomorrow, we will have the global leaders of summit, where we have over 16 universities from across the globe that will engage with our students here at the University of the Free State. So students from the States, students from, in fact, the Frey University of Amsterdam are here, undergraduate and postgraduate students, students from the UK, students from Asia, students from Australia, students from our neighbouring states, like Lesotho, for instance, is also going to be here. And we're going to talk about leadership issues, leadership challenges, and you all know what those of challenges are that we currently are experiencing. So again, that specific summit is for us crucial, and it, in fact, touches on what also the objectives of PACE stands for. So I am someone that believe in change, but I'm also someone that believe in innovation. And I believe that PACE, both, in fact, PACE and the Global Leaders of Summit for us, are two great examples how the university and the university community can engage with other partners across the world. So PACE is a unique example of how creative minds with a deep passion for arts and its development have created a platform to accentuate the important aspect of development of interdisciplinary creative arts industries in Africa. And we must never underestimate the enormous shift in creative thinking in the movement of scientific challenges and engagement that we can extract when different disciplines intersect. And that's exactly what we're trying to do here. Once again, I want to pull that back to the university. One of our key foci is the establishment of inter-multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary groups so that we can value the intersections between those disciplines. And there's often the best spot where you try to move science. And if you then engage, you can have the same principle that you apply in the arts. So I'm impressed by the number of international presenters, producers, buyers, artists, directors, festival organisers, development agencies, and the number of participants from the general public that are involved and in fact have shown their interest in PACE. And I'm also impressed with the commitment of the PACE organisers to make this inaugural programme one that will be remembered. I spent some time looking at the impressive list of partners and international guests attending this year's Free State Art Festival. And there's a lot. In fact, we track over the next couple of days, we attract a lot of delegates and guests and attendees to the Free State Art Festival. And I've been told that many of them are also involved in PACE. So this is an incredible milestone for the Festival Organising Committee and the organisers of PACE. So from this year, PACE will be, apparently I will have to be corrected, Ricardo, if I'm wrong, I buy annual arts market for African artists, that's the indication, developed for national and international presenters and producers. It offers the highest quality of interdisciplinary arts products and that products are not only referred to physical products, I'm referred to theatre, I'm referred to dance, I'm referred to music, I'm referred to craft. And that is from bias to, from bias to, from Africa to bias, artists and the general public. And I think what we heard earlier is not only within the continent, it's also from outside the continent to inside the continent. So therefore I want to wish Ricardo Pich and the PACE Organising Committee the best of luck for further growth and expansion of the programme. This is the programme that has been conceptualised here in Bloemfontein and it's fantastically to see how that will grow and I will keep a close eye to measure the growth. A special word of congratulation is also extended to the founding directors. And Knight Joer, that talked a little bit earlier, Urban Mars, I know he's here, Isabel Horson and Ria Mokone, as well as many other wonderful people that PACE used as PACE volunteers to be able to make this successful. So this is, I believe, just the beginning of an initiative with potential of national and continental impact. And therefore, Ricardo to you and the team, I wish you all of the best and I know that we can expect brilliant output from PACE. Thank you very much and welcome to you all again. You gave everyone a good overview again of PACE. And now, I'd like to welcome Gureti Kierhoma-Hendu. Right? Please come on stage and warm welcome from the Africa's Writers' Trust. She's our keynote for today. Good morning, no, good afternoon. Sorry, good afternoon. It's still morning where I'm coming from. I just came from the airport, straight here. Good morning once again. I'm really feeling very happy and excited to be here, particularly in Blochentine. And it always feels like home when I come to South Africa because I did my postgraduate studies at the University of Guazzol Natal in Durban. And I was, it was, you know, part of my happiest time for the two years that I was there. So it always feels very good to come back to South Africa. But I would wish it was summer and not cold. So I'd like to, first of all, extend my great thanks and gratitude to the organizers of the Free State Art Festival and PACE. I've been dealing a lot and communicating with Nikki, with Ricardo, with Cornell, and with Erin. Thanks so much for inviting me and enabling me to come to Blochentine. So I'm going to speak about the state of mobility of the arts in Africa, in and from Africa. But I'm going to start by telling you a story because I'm a storyteller. So my presentation is going to be in a story form. So I'll start by telling you a story. A story about myself and in particular about my life as a writer and a literary activist for the past 20 years. In 1996, my first novel entitled The First Daughter was published in Uganda after a long struggle involving having to raise the funds myself to publish it. And that was $2,500 at that time. This is the money that was required to publish the novel. It took me more than one year to raise this money from a funding Dutch organization which was based in Uganda at that time. My publisher in Uganda had little experience of publishing fiction. And the very first fiction of books that they had published a couple of years back had done extremely poorly on the market. And that's why they were skeptical about investing any more money into fictional books. And that's how I came to be asked to fund my own publication, even when they agreed that it was well written and worth publishing. To date, The First Daughter is one of the best-selling and popular books in Uganda and is running in its fourth or fifth print. It's taught in most secondary and high schools and universities in and beyond Uganda. When I was asked to raise the funds to publish the novel in the early 90s, little did I know that my career path in fundraising and literary activism was being defined. At that time, I had zero experience or knowledge of writing funding applications and everything I do and know now has been learned on the job and fueled by a deep passion and love and in many cases, sheer determination to see the book sector in Africa grow. In 1996, soon after my first novel was published, I, together with a few other women, we formed FemRite, which is a gender-defined and membership-based organization for Ugandan women writers. I was to become its first director for the first 10 years. Why did we start FemRite? In a nutshell, we started FemRite to support, to develop, to promote, inspire, empower women who sought to write their stories and publish their books. And how did we do this? We organized training workshops which focused on the writing craft and self-empowerment, provided a home base for our members, which also doubled as office space. We offered an identity to the writers, which came in form of membership cards. We held a weekly book club to inspire members to read and to discuss and critique their works in progress. Information sharing, which was related to writing and publishing opportunities. And we also had a resource center, which offered a library and space and computers to write. Why did we focus on these particular areas that have defined above? This was because that the women who came to us had the basic skill and talent to write, but needed a little more training to hone their writing skills. And that's why we held the creative writing workshops. But more crucially, many of them lacked the self-empowerment to write and tell the stories in their hearts. And I did not understand what it means to be a woman, a writer, and an African woman writer. So I'll just briefly explain why we did the self-empowerment training workshops. You see in many African societies, a woman's identity is defined using that of another. So if it's a woman who is married, for example, a prefix that precedes your name is that of your husband. So this is an example. If my husband was called Kyomuhendo, which is not, my name would be Muka Kyomuhendo. So Muka means wife of, and that becomes your identity. Or if you are a mother of a child called John, your name would be Mama John. Or if you are a daughter of somebody called Nikki, your name would be the daughter of Nikki. So these identities would come into play when women started writing their stories. They would think about all these identities and worry what the people behind these identities, that is the spouses, or the children, or the fathers, would think of what they wrote. What would happen if such a woman used the F word in their writing? What would the husband say? What would the son say? Or what would the father say? So we realized that this was hindering the women to write the stories in their hearts. So we held self-empowerment training workshops to enable women to understand as a writer you need to push those boundaries, as a writer you need to go beyond the identities that have been given to you by society. You have to write as an individual. So the self-empowerment workshops were about empowering women to push the boundaries and to understand what it means and what it takes to be a woman, an African woman, an African woman writer. So why did we offer a home, as I've said above, a home to the members of the association? Because writing is a profession that is not easily understood in our African societies. I remember when I started writing in 1994, and some of my peers and colleagues were doing other jobs like accountants or engineers or teachers, and then I would be asked, so what is it that you do? And I would say, I'm a writer. And I would see their faces fall in that kind of way that would say, oh, you mean you have no job. So writing is not a profession that easily understood. So the identity we offered the women at this association was to help them to define what they did. So they would have a membership card to show I'm a writer and writing is a profession just like being a teacher. And then it's writing, as you know, is a very isolating, and most of the times it's frustrating activity. So the home that we offered to the members gave the space where the writers could hold communion with other writers where they would share their frustrations and give affirmation that what they were doing where it was not completely crazy because sometimes that's how it feels. When you write and you don't get published and you don't get acknowledged, it feels what you are doing is crazy. And of course, as you know, it doesn't really pay much. So after all these activities, we realized that we're only tackling the tip of an iceberg. We were training the women to write, yes. We were empowering them to tell the stories in their hearts, yes, but we needed to do more. And that's when the idea of publishing of our own stories came up. Fem right publications limited, the publishing arm of the organization was set up a few years later. And with no prior experience in publishing books, we went ahead and launched our first five titles in the year 2000. We did not only publish books, but went ahead to promote, market and sell them. We also carried out reading campaigns, visited schools around the country and ran a weekly book club, a television writers program, and the writers column in the country's biggest newspaper. We also traveled abroad to promote our works, but spitting in the London Book Fair, the Frankfurt Book Fair, Zimbabwe International Book Fair and many others in Africa. To date, Fem right is still going strong. After 20 years with over 50 publications and a membership of nearly 60. First forward to 2007. This is the year that I left Fem right and after 10 years and moved to London. My initial plan when I moved to London in 2007 was to take a break from all the activism I had been engaged in in the past 10 years. I wanted to focus on my writing, get an eight to five job where my salary was assured and be a good wife. I did get a job as part of the organizing team for the London Literature Festival at the Southbank Center, which is based in London. But I only lasted for two years in the eight to five job. In 2009, I founded the African Writers Trust. And you may ask why if I had an eight to five job. Through my work at the Southbank Center, I was interacting with many African writers working and living in the African diaspora, largely in the UK and the US, but also from elsewhere. I realized that I did not know much about the account. I realized that these writers did not know much about the counterparts who worked and were based on the African continent, men of whom I had met and interacted with during my tenure at Fem right. And whenever I would return to Uganda, which was usually once a year, I would tell my writer friends about these wonderful writers I was meeting in the UK. Who wrote so well? Who were so accomplished in their writing careers? Who had won many literary prizes? Most of them meant for African writers and who seemed to possess a wealth of information on writers' residences, publishing opportunities, and others. And whenever I interacted with the diasporic writers back in London, I would brag about my colleagues at Fem right and the other Ugandan and African writers on the continent who had achieved so much, but yet remained unknown to the writing fraternity outside Africa. And that's when I realized that there was a disconnect between the two groups. As African writers, we were divided along geographical lines, but we were dealing with the same issues affecting African writers. And drawing our stories from the same epistemological space, Africa was still our common denominator. But because the writers who left the continent are more established, they are more successful, and have access to information and other resources in comparison to the writers who remained on the continent, there is a sense of friction in the way the two groups relate. And I wanted to do something about this disparity because I see myself inhabiting both spaces as a diasporic, but also as a continental-based African writer. And that's how in 2009, I came to establish the African writer's trust with the aim of bridging the divide that exists between African writers in the diaspora and writers on the continent, bringing them together in order to promote synergies between the two groups. So how do we achieve this at the African writer's trust? Our main focus has been to tap into the expertise, the knowledge, experience, and skills of the more established writers and publishing professionals in the industry, and create platforms for them to share these resources with the writers, editors, and other publishing professionals who live and work on the continent. This is because of the fact that there is a critical shortage of editors and other publishing professionals on the continent, and which has affected the quality of literature being produced. So these are some of the activities that we do at the African writer's trust. We have so far held five skills development workshops in editing and publishing, training over 100 editors and writers from 11 African countries. We also created an editorial internship whereby two of our trainees spent six weeks, each working as apprentices at Mojage Books in Cape Town. And from this program, we have published the stories of the participants in the book which is entitled, Monescapes. The trainers of these workshops have come from the UK, particularly from Granta Publishing House, and also from Quella Books in Cape Town. We also run a Bayania International Writers Conference, which is every two years, which brings together at least 20 to 30 writers from the diaspora and from the continent. We've had writers coming from the African diaspora in Canada, in the US, in Norway, in the Netherlands, and then from the continent, from Malawi, from South Africa, from Nigeria, from Cameroon, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, and of course Uganda. We have so far held three editions, starting in 2013. And these conferences have been headlined by some of the leading African writers, including Professor Zeke Smuda, Dr. Bibi Bakare Yusuf, Dr. Lem Sisi, and Professor Jack Mapanje. Our most ambitious activity to date is the Publishing Fellowship Program, which has been designed to create a step change in the book industry in Africa. It will target emerging publishers and self-publishing authors from seven East African countries to begin with. The program will later be rolled out in Southern and Western Africa, and will run up to 2020. The program's goal is to facilitate the sharing of skills and knowledge and expertise and collaborative learning between the more experienced publishers and the early career and emerging ones. This will be done in a training and mentoring workshop in November 2018, and will be held in Kampala. After the workshop, participants will be invited to apply for seed funding and one successful participant will be awarded 4,000 euros to go and publish the work that they have worked on during the training workshop. So in the 20 years of working with two literary initiatives that I've explained above that is Firmright and the African Writers Trust, I have learned that many issues hinder the smooth movement of artists and their products within Africa. And these are at different levels, but in many ways, they are all interlinked. So I'm going to talk just briefly about some of the issues that I've encountered in my work with Firmright and the African Writers Trust. So for me, this is what has hindered the smooth movement of writers, other artists and their works within Africa itself, but also outside Africa. There is poor infrastructure network and a transport system. For example, how do you get a writer or an artist from Somalia to participate in an event in Uganda? We tried this at one time. Geographically, Somalia and Uganda are not that apart. But because of the poor infrastructure network, because of the conflicts within Africa, the ticket to bring this writer from Somalia was more expensive than the ticket we paid to bring Zex Muda from the US. And because there's no direct flight and you need a visa to leave Somalia and to reenter Somalia even when you are national, so the visa issue was complicated. The ticket issue was complicated. And for me, this is one of the issues that has hindered movement of artists within Africa. Then language barrier is another issue because of our colonial legacy. As you know, Africa is divided along language lines. You talk of the Anglophone, the Francophone, the Lucophone, Arabic and many others. How can we communicate? How can our products travel within Africa if we cannot communicate in a universal language? Then the other issue is of course the travel restrictions, particularly applying to African artists. And this is both within Africa, but also to go outside Africa. And this particularly applies to artists who are best in the Sub-Saharan Africa. I'll give you an example of the editorial internship program that I've mentioned. We had the money to sponsor a writer, an editor to go to Namibia and spend six weeks. But she was denied the visa because she was coming from Uganda. And the reason that was given to us was Namibia thought Uganda was infested with Ebola. Of course, which it was not at that time. Getting a visa from Tanzania or Uganda to come to South Africa is a very complicated issue. So this has limited the movement of artists and their products within the continent. How does a writer go from Uganda to Senegal, for example, that's another travel restriction, or from Tanzania to Central Africa Republic? Then the other issue is, of course, lack of money to fund the travel of these artists and their writers. I think that doesn't need an explanation. The other point I've encountered is the unfavorable trading policies within Africa, where many countries now tax the importation of books into particular countries, but also because of the lack of single currencies or markets within Africa. If you are from Tanzania and you are selling your products in Zimbabwe, you'll be paid in the local currents. So how do you transfer that money back to your home country? So for me, this is one of the issues that has limited the movement of books and other art forms within Africa. And something else I've encountered in my last 20 years of literary activism is the lack of human agency. I'm calling this for lack of a better word. The capacity to act on our own, the capacity to function without the support of the donor agencies. I've found this a big problem. But I also want to point out that as we talk about lack of human agents, we should also remember and put into consideration the limitations that have been imposed on us by the donor funding agencies. I know this is both controversial and contradictory that as artists we still need donor agencies to support our work, but at the same time have this feeling that perhaps if they were to pull out, maybe we would find our own human agency to function. And this brings me to the point of donor driven initiatives or donor dependence. For me, this puts our literary initiatives and any other art initiatives at a big risk of creating unsustainable models. I'll want to explain a little bit on this. So I'm not saying that all the donor agencies we work with, we should stop giving us the money because we need the money to function. We need the art to be supported. But my main quarrel with the donor agencies is that they support our work from the roof and not from the foundation. So what I mean is the money normally given to us is to run activities and not to build the foundation of that initiative. So what happens when there's no foundation for something? It means that when the donor stops funding you, that initiative is going to collapse because we did not put in what it requires to lay the foundation for it to sustain itself even when the donors pull out. So I'm not saying they should stop, but I'm saying they should reconsider and start funding initiatives to build it from the start. When they give you money to run such a conference without a foundation, what happens when they don't support you anymore? And then this other point is not really related to the movement of books, but this is also what I've learned over the past 20 years of my work, that writers and other artists are spending all their time building and running these initiatives and in a way have stopped creating their art. So for me, this is also a danger that we need to address. So what is the way forward? What can be done or what is already being done now to address the issue of lack of movement of arts and our products within Africa and beyond? So in the past decade, there has been a surge of exciting and new initiatives, literary and other art forms on the continent. And the people at the center of these initiatives are experimenting and rethinking new ways to create and distribute their art. So I'll just mention a few. For example, in Uganda, there is an initiative called Rightivism. There is the BN Poetry Foundation. There is the Bayimba Festival of the Arts. There is a publishing house called So Many Stories. In Kenya alone, we have Story Moja. We have the Gelada Pan-African Organization. We have the Kwani Trust. We have the Magunga Book, an online book library. In Somaliland, there is the Hageisa International Book Festival. In South Africa, we know of the Abanto Festival in Soweto. The short story there, Africa, the Chimurenga and Cape Town. In Nigeria, we have Kosovo Republic Press, the Ake Festival, Parasia Publishers, Farofina, and many others. And of course now we can talk of PACE as a new initiative. I think really Nikki and all the team deserve a big clap for joining the other initiatives I have talked about. So for me, these new initiatives, both literary and other art forms, is a way of addressing the issues that I'm talking about. Because the people behind these initiatives are taking it into their own hands. They are taking the human agents to try and address the issues affecting the movement of the arts in Africa. Then the other, something that is also being done to address that issue as a way forward, is the number of travel grants for artists. There is the Prince Claus Fund based in the Netherlands. There is the Art Move Africa. There is the East Africa Travel Grant, which is run by the British Council and Dune Foundation and Lambent Foundation. So the East Africa Travel Grant enables artists who are based in East Africa to move within East Africa. So if there is a festival in Nairobi and you are based in Tanzania or Ethiopia, this grant will enable you to go to attend that festival and also to showcase your products. It's a new initiative which was launched just two years ago. So what else can be done to address these issues? As artists, we should continue to push our governments to fund and support the arts. Very few countries in Africa, for example, have an arts council where funds can be channeled to support the arts. So we should not stop, but continue to push our governments to support the arts. In conclusion, I just want to reemphasize why the arts should be supported, why the arts should continue being supported and why the arts traditionally, even in developed countries, have continued to be supported. Art is crucial to building and sustaining the soul and spirit of any community. Artists articulate and interpret the world for the rest of humanity and enable us a deeper meaning of what it means to be human. Just for a second, imagine life without music, life without dance, life without poetry, life without film and sculptures and paintings and color. Where would we derive our beauty from? Where would we derive our happiness from? And so for that reason alone, art should continue being supported. In addition, in case you're not convinced why art should continue to be supported, art is a money maker. The creative industries are a source of revenue for government. Art festivals bring in tourists, they create jobs, they boost the service industries, like hotels, like airlines and many others. And for our governments who are still reluctant to support the art, but find other initiatives which are not art related. For example, in Uganda, we are told that in order to give artists or writers money to publish their books, they want to first educate the population. Because if a population is illiterate, then they'll not buy your books. They also want to make and keep the population healthy. So they will find health related activities or sanitation so that the population can be healthy in order to read. But we are saying art is not secondary, but rather complementary to all the other important activities that are funded by governments or other funding agencies. Art is not a group of women dancing at the airports to welcome important dignitaries, or drama or theater that is used to popularize a funded project like in Uganda, the AIDS and HIV projects. Most of the time, the governments will use drama or theater to popularize them. So that's their understanding of art. Art is a phytic. Art is important. Art is money. Art should be enabled to move and cross borders and boundaries. I thank you. From the audience, I don't know. I know for me, I could relate so much to somebody who's had the luxury of being in England and often doing projects in England. And if they say, you've got funding, you've got funding and they don't do your turn so much, it's maybe happened once or twice. It's been an absolute baptism of fire working on pace on the continent. I completely respect artists that can come and work and make great work. I related to so many of the issues, but also so many of the solutions. Does anybody have any comments or anything that they want to add or any questions they have to agree with? Did she say all? Yes, because technology in Africa, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, is still an issue, still a big problem. I live for part of the year in Uganda, for about four, five months. And having Wi-Fi in my office is very expensive. It does not support skyping, for example. So when I'm in Uganda, in a way, I feel cut off from the rest of the continent. Telephone, communication, as I say, skyping or other forms are still very expensive, but it is one way that we can tap into, to use, to bridge these gaps that keep dividing us. That is on one end. But on the other hand, I've heard it from the donor agencies when I'm organizing a training workshop, when I'm organizing a writer's conference in Uganda. And they wonder, where do you want to bring somebody from Botswana? I've heard writers come from Botswana. You could just have a kind of Skype meeting, it's too expensive to bring them, but for me, I cannot reemphasize the importance of human contact, of human touch, of somebody coming, traveling physically, and being present at that conference. So I'm not saying your point is not taken or important, but I'm also saying it's one of the ways that we can tap into. But personally, I would 100% want to have people meeting, collaborating, interacting physically. So we should continue, we should continue to fight the visa restrictions, remove those stupid boundaries. Let people move, you know? For me, the more we find solution to that, that people should be unable to move. Why should a writer from Uganda, or Tanzania be prohibited to travel to Namibia? We had another writer coming from Central Africa Republic, which is French speaking. We had got an interpreter. He wouldn't get a visa to come to Uganda. So in my opinion, we should continue fighting those restrictions. We should keep fighting, so artists should be enabled, should be supported to interact. Because what you are talking about, how would we address the issue of showcasing what is happening here? Somebody has been denied a visa from Nigeria. So we are going to listen to, I don't know how. Well, we'll connect with him on Skype. On Skype, yes. After lunch, it was an ideal. Unfortunately, he's not the worst case scenario, because at least he travels in and out of Nigeria, but there's other people who just couldn't even get past the passport stage. It's extremely frustrating. In fact, we'd had a conversation about Rwanda. They didn't even realize that they didn't have a consulate. So the Rwandes aren't coming on Monday, because they've still not fixed the South African diplomatic issue between their countries. And it's so frustrating, because the artists are ready, but it's them actually being able to cross borders. So yes, Skype is good, and all other modern technological forms, but we should fight that. We should be allowed to showcase our works. We should have people performing here. We should have writers launching their books. Shaking. A little loud, shaking. Yes, on this side, government is usually scared of you. Take the mic. Okay, technology, technology. Yes. I was saying that artists are supposed to be on one side of the fence, and government on the other side of the fence. And there's a big suspicion between the two groups, because the traditional role of the artists is to do what we're doing. The artists do not sit with their arms folded. They don't fold their arms when things are going wrong. And when we look around, things are not going the way they should go. So the artists become the first suspect, because they are the first to speak out. The artists, they've got big mouths. They're painted, they talk about it. Now government would not want to support that kind of thing. And so if the artist is forced, is pushed to the wall and asked to go to the government, then the artist must know what to say. He must sing the tune they want to listen to. That way, would that not be subverting the arts itself? And so I'm thinking, is it possible to create some alternative channels where artists can go to, so that that freedom is not taken away, because once you lose that, then it becomes a case of bread and butter. I just want to feed, and that's why I'm doing what I'm doing. And so wherever the funding comes from, I'm ready to take it. And when you take it, you are told what to say and what to do. And that may not be too satisfactory for some artists. Yes, I can see what you mean, but that's why I said that the government will use the artists when it suits them. When they want a group of women dancing, I don't know if it happens in other African countries, it happens a lot at the airport. If that is not art, what is that? So they will use the art when it suits them. They will fund artists to popularize a government project. So if money is channeled through an arts council, and I do understand what you mean because I've heard complaints from countries like Tanzania, Zambia, which have arts councils that sometimes there is this kind of restrictions of strings attached to getting that money. But for me, that is not an excuse for the governments not to fund our work. It's not an excuse. We pay tax. As I say, we create revenue for the government. We create jobs. We do a lot that the government benefits from. So why shouldn't we get some money back? I don't know if there is somebody from arts council England here. So if arts council England can fund the publication of a book, and the government channels money through the arts council and other funding agencies. So that's what I mean that the government should continue and if in cases they haven't, they should still fund our projects. I'm not saying that a government should give you money and dictate to you what you should write and not write. But there are many other ways they can support our work. Doesn't have to be, you know, there is for example, policy issue. I know in South Africa, most writers have their books being taught in schools. Some African governments don't push for that. So that's one way of supporting and funding our work. If my book is taught in many schools in Uganda has a government policy. If the government instituted that, that is supporting my work. So that's what I meant by that. For me? Yeah. Thank you very much for the keynote. It was very, very inspiring. The question I want to ask is about around initiatives that your organization in Femme Wright in Uganda established and also the African Writers Trust. And you talked about publication, publishing fellowships and editing training programs. There's sometimes a problem if you take a model of training from maybe Europe or the States and bring it into Africa because it might not work for the environment and there might not be the kind of processes they suggest in that training possible within an African environment. So I would like you to share maybe one or two of the ways that you've been able to find out or develop the kind of model that works within that environment and has obviously been successful because the events are still going on and we are re-printing the reward. So could you share us some tips on how to develop a training program that works with the environment in Africa that the local people can continue to push after the workshop is over? Okay, so I will talk about the training program that we've been running for five years now, training in editing and publishing skills. And when we were designing this program, it was after realizing from our experiences as writers and particularly when I moved to the UK and as I said, used to interact with a lot of African writers in the diaspora, not only the writers, but also with their books. Read them and get inspired, but then also wonder, so what is so different about this book? What is so different about this story? It is drawing from the same epistemological space that writers on the continent do. It is telling the same story, but for me the difference was how the story was being told. The input of a professional book editor, what they had done to add value to that story. So that when I realized the stories are not different, we just need to tell our stories better. We just need the input of that professional book editor who crosses the T's as they say and dots the I's and guides the writer to produce good literature. So that's how we designed the program for the first five years. We'd get trainers, as I said, from the UK, from South Africa because they have, you know, their publishing industry is more advanced compared to most of the continent. So the trainers come in, we trained over 100 editors and publishers from 11 African countries for five years. So the second program I've talked about is based on the feedback from these 100, over 100 participants. After the training workshop, after the editorial internships we created, what would you want to see change in the book industry in Africa? What is still lacking? What else can we do? And the feedback was we've got the skills, we've got the expertise, we've got the knowledge, we've been trained, but we are sitting on this knowledge. We can't publish. We still need the money. We still need additional expertise and teaching to publish better. So that's how the second program was designed based on the feedback of the people we had trained already. And that's how we pushed our donors to give us seed funding. So for the next program, if you attend this mentoring workshop, you're going to have a chance to apply for seed funding, as I said, which is worth 4,000 pounds, which you need to publish a good book. So it will be very competitive. It will be, you have to apply for it. You have to present in a convincing project to the panel. But at least we know we are going to get something, a physical product out of the training. So it will not only stop at training, at editorial internships, but to produce a good book, a model publication that has had the input of all that a book requires. Because the mentors will still be the more experienced publishers, and then the money is calculated is what you need to publish a good book. So that's how we designed that particular program, using feedback and also trying it first for the first five years. Good afternoon. You mentioned that your book has been used and distributed around schools in Uganda and that it's part of the curriculum. Have you found that there are other countries in Africa that have used a similar initiative? And also our curriculum is going to be very Eurocentric in terms of literature, in terms of studying their classics. So are there any other, have there been any other governments or ministers, maybe like in Senegal or other countries that have had initiatives to spread more indigenous literature as part of their educational curriculum? Ozzy, can you repeat that? You didn't get the last bit, it's the last bits of it. No, I just said that are there any other countries or governments that have specifically introduced more indigenous literature as part of their curriculum? I think I'll start with the second part of the question. I think there are quite a number of such initiatives in Nigeria, because are you talking specifically about the Women Writers Group, which used to write and publish our own books? Okay, so for women writers organizations, I know there's one in Ghana called Mbassim, Women Writers Group. There is one in Nigeria, one in Nigeria. There is one in South Africa. I don't know if it still exists. I came to Johannesburg a few years ago to participate in the conference. Then the Zimbabwe Women Writers Association that has been going very strong and they write and publish, distribute and market their own books. So I think those are the few that I know that are doing similar work. So about my book, did you ask if it was being distributed outside Uganda as well? Sorry, I hope you didn't say that. The successes of in other countries of this happening, bringing more indigenous voices into schools. So in the same way, what was brought into schools, you heard any other countries that have sort of followed a similar model? I also mentioned Zimbabwe Women Writers have done that a lot. Not only in schools, but also they have done an anthology of women in prison, for example, kind of community writing. So it is a kind of mediating stories. Mediating stories on one hand, they are women who have stories to tell, but they don't have the tools to tell them. They are illiterate, they can't write, or if they can, they don't have the skill of telling a story. Then on the other hand, they are the women writers who have the skill and expertise to write. So they mediate these stories and I've published them in anthologies. So I would say Zimbabwe Women Writers have done writing with prison projects, writing projects. Last question. Ishmel. Good afternoon. This is Q. Moen. Thank you very much for your very inspiring speech. I cannot agree more to what you've said. So thank you very much. But just a small remark, not so much of a question. You said we automatically seem to associate your funding to government. But if you think that we are in a society which is economizing, and we actually want to change certain things to bring back emotions and whatever, and personal contacts, then government are not the first partner you would look at because they're often reactive. In a sense, they weigh what's happening in society. I think it's much more important that you engage the private sector. And because we have what they call corporate social responsibility. Now, what does that mean? That is mean bringing back the human perspective in what you do, how you do business. I can well see that next year in Pace, here we have companies presented who are looking. We have the mayor of Bloemfondain here because it's not arts, offense, and society. You know it's arts within society. That should come back. So I think it's very important to look at the private sector. That's my comment. Just a bit, I would still, I know how controversial the issue of government supporting art is, but for me when I say support, it's not necessarily the money. It is the good will. I'll give you an example. Our president some years back when he had just come into power, it's been over 30 years now. So he came on a mission to the African diaspora in the UK and the US and touring and inviting people who had run our exile during the bad, I mean days to return to Uganda. So we could build a nation and all that stuff. And he made a comment. It is attributed to him, I'll say, a comment was attributed to him, so I don't get into trouble. A comment was attributed to him that everybody can come back, you know, the business and all that except the poets. Because, you know, they live in the clouds, they're not serious. You know, they can't compute anything to nation building. So that was about probably 15 years ago. But what I'm sure of about two, three years ago, he made a similar comment that the arts are useless. They should not be funded at universities. So the government now puts money to fund science courses and not the arts. So that's my worry that we don't have the good will and support our governments and we should. And we should demand it. We should demand it. So it's not only about the money, but it's the good will, it's the support. It is to create an environment for us to create our art. So for me, all that goes into the issue of support. When, as you know, we had Idi Amin in Uganda, how many writers, playwrights were killed during Idi Amin? What environment, I keep saying, three things happened to the writers in the 1970s in Uganda. They either went silent or they were killed or they ran away. So we need an enabling environment that is the kind of support from our governments. Yes, private sector will give you the money to create your art. They will sponsor your festival or your performance or theater, but we still need government to support our art, our work. And the last question from the show. Thank you. Mine's not so much a question, it's just a comment. But thank you very much for a very, very inspiring keynote address. I think you've touched immensely well on the issue of borders as barriers for mobility and collaboration and growth. But I think the voice of artists needs to become so much more louder when we talk about bringing art into schools. We hear artists' voices quite articulately when it comes to festivals, theaters and communities, community centres. But it's just not loud enough about how we take art into schools. And I think in that particular regard, the biggest borders that we have and one which we're not challenging loudly enough is the divide that exists between the departments of arts and culture, the departments of education and the departments of community development. That's the primary borders that we need to blur before we even begin to talk about blurring the borders that separate us in terms of towns, provinces, regions, countries on the continent.