Adinkra - African Stories for Kids
Armelle Touko remembers the African tales that her grandmother told her when she was young and she wishes the same for her daughter, MG.
Armelle Who?
Touko. Armelle Touko.
Mother. Feminist. Humanitarian. Editor. Educator. Communicator. Entrepreneur. Poet. Author. Armelle Touko wears many hats, but the one that has impressed the Djellibah team the most is her digital publishing house for children. Adinkra.
“I am a feminist, and I am proud of it. Feminism is a state of mind, it is humanism, it is to consider that every human being has an inalienable value and deserves respect and integrity, without distinction of sex, race, religion. As I like to say, women carry within them centuries of suffering and inequality, it has always been necessary to fight twice as hard, to excel twice as much, to be recognized and not necessarily at its true value. On the balance of equality, women are in deficit. I think that everyone at their own level, women as well as men, should work to change this.”
Her Beginnings
Originally from the Western region of Cameroon, Armelle was born and raised in the locality of Nkongsamba. She likes to specify it. She pursued her entire primary and secondary education in this city, specifically at the Lycée Manengouba for the secondary level. At the age of 16, when she obtained her Baccalaureate, she joined Esstic (Ecole Supérieure des Sciences et Techniques de l'Information et de la Communication.) in the publishing sector, from where she graduated at the top of her class and entered the employment market. A few years later, she completed an MBA in Marketing Management. After 9 months of professional internships in different publishing houses, she received her first salary which was 30 000 F CFA (barely 46 EUR), but was building up experience in her field of study, which was useful for her to then join the publishing house AFREDIT (Africaine d'Édition). Today Armelle is Communications Manager in a humanitarian organization.
Her Passions
Easy. The woman and the child. Armelle remembers her childhood with nostalgia. "Those were the best times" according to her. Opportunities to get lost in the stimulating pages of a book or a comic strip were never lacking. Discovering faraway worlds, foreign concepts and characters from all walks of life enchanted her forever.
Now, her wish is to share this passion with today's children, with one difference. Today, as Africans, we need to tell our own stories, anchored in our own realities. Jean Cocteau's La Belle et la Bete, did not cross the borders of his native land by telling the stories of others. The same logic applies to ours. They have only value if we give them the value they deserve and to do so, we must imperatively tell our own stories, whatever the cost.
Here is Armelle’s opinion on the practical aspects of producing children's books in the traditional way:
“ I think doing children’s books in the traditional way is killing the business before it’s even born (in Africa). Children’s books have the peculiarity of being full-color, which is exaggeratedly expensive in terms of printing costs, and considering the quantities, the economy of scale does not necessarily allow for profitability. At Adinkra, we have strategically made the choice of the digital book and not the physical book for several reasons: already, with the digital book, we are breaking down geographic barriers, we cancel printing costs, we contribute to saving the planet because it is an eco-citizen choice, and we are adapting ourselves to the supports that our core target group likes. Regarding social morals, we have a duty to educate society, to educate parents to support them. This is a cultural emergency, and it will require the quality of our content, taking into account the real needs of parents and children, and their support. We have been working on this since day one.”
Her Ambitions
Armelle is a federator, her initiative AdinkraFemmes.org proves it.
She is a woman sensitive to feminine expression. For her, all women should have the opportunity, the possibility, the courage of expression, and for this, the Adinkra-Femmes collective is a forum that is offered to them through their calls for texts.
The primary goal is to democratize writing, to liberate expression, but also to unseal and develop potentials. They specifically target women, but are open to all, without any gender distinction. In addition, they allow us to train and recruit authors for Adinkra Editions, because we have an incessant need for content. Officially, "The mission of the Adinkra Women's Collective is to promote, develop and support the free and assumed expression of women in the literary, artistic and socio-cultural fields. It is about federating women in general, and African women in particular, around the issues they identify with".
The objectives of the collective are the following:
To bring together women of African origin around the issues with which they identify, through literary, social, cultural and artistic projects;
To pool forces, potentials and resources for the promotion and enhancement of the free and assumed expression of African women living all over the world;
To create a network of skills and mutual aid.
Armelle made a name for herself on RFI, in 2019, here is a clip presented by Nathalie Amar and Stéphanie Dongmo. (this Clip is in French)
Her Creation : Adinkra
What does“Adinkra” mean?
You are probably wondering what is the etymology of this unusual word. After all, it is a term with roots in West Africa.
“The Adinkra are West African symbols evocative of traditional wisdom. Originally created by the Ashanti of Ghana and the Gyaman of the Ivory Coast, they represent concepts or aphorisms, which transmit traditional wisdom, aspects of life or the environment. It is this symbolism of transmission specific to Africa, which justifies the choice of Adinkra as the name of our publishing house whose leitmotif is both cultural and educational. Among dozens of Adinkra, the symbol chosen to accompany our logo is the Adinkra of Excellence.”
In March 2020, when COVID-19 was rampant and managed to freeze the cities of the world in time, Armelle Touko thought of the children. Imagine for a moment being a child and that overnight you don't go to school because of an illness, when you are not sick. Your whole family stays at home, and if anyone ever goes out, it is with a mask...
What in the world is happening!?
Adinkra had the answer, and she broadcast it to the whole world. Her “12 slides to explain the Coronavirus to children" was a spontaneous initiative, to accompany an urgent and punctual health problem, a citizen's action therefore, and totally disinterested in monetary gain. Armelle and her team considered this booklet as a zero product, which eventually surpassed all expectations. The booklet was translated from French into 07 languages (Swahili, Lingala, Fulfulde, Bambara, Sépédi, English, Spanish), distributed on a multitude of platforms, and was printed by the Ministry of Public Health of Cameroon, for distribution in rural areas. This experience has allowed Adinkra to reinforce their certainty that the need is there, and their targets are sensitive to content that meets the needs presented. At the same time, we had the opportunity to test their digital books in terms of content and form, their editorial approach, and their image, which so far has been promising! They will continue to work hard, and to be very attentive to the quality of their content. They will continue to work hard, and remain attentive with regard to the quality of their content, which includes traditional tales, poem collections, adventure books, and a collection of works on African historical figures.
Check out the piece BBC Africa published on Adinkra and Armelle’s work.
Armelle is a real innovator. In the midst of a pandemic, during a time of unparalleled confusion and monumental uncertainty for the whole world, she ordered the production of slides to explain the Coronavirus to children. FREE OF CHARGE!
M.G., Armelle's daughter, is her most avid reader, and she often gives advice to mom on what to talk about.
“For us at Adinkra, it was out of the question, even unthinkable, to sell the slides. This did not correspond to the spirit of the initiative, which aimed to sensitize as many children as possible throughout the world. We are happy that the slides were so successful, and that the Cameroon Ministry of Public Health decided to have them printed to distribute them to young people in remote areas of Cameroon.”
To date, Adinkra has a good thirty books. During 2021, wherever you are in the world, you will be able to buy digital books from Adinkra , by subscription, on their online platform, currently under construction.
If you want to be the first to access the online platform when it launches, click here for pre-subscription.
Armelle answers the Djellibah questions:
1) What is your dream for Africa?
My dream for Africa is twofold. First of all, I would like African countries to finally understand the importance of education. That a revigoration be made to set in motion an educational system that awakens, and that is carried towards the love of Africa and the desire for development. That strong apprenticeship structures are born in various countries and in a coordinated manner, which train on the trades/sectors of the future (technology, sustainable development, agriculture, automotive, industries, etc. ...), to enable Africa to produce its own intellectual elite, its own workforce, which will take care of its own development needs.
I finally dream that Africa stops persecuting and killing its women bit by bit. That we can have strong institutions, strong laws, which allow us to fight against all sorts of violence, and that we can once and for all work on the root of the problem, instilling in our children, both girls and boys, a positive education. Firstly, for girls, an emphasis on an equitable education that values self-confidence, self-awareness, awareness of one's intrinsic values, but also the knowledge and integration of one's fundamental rights. For boys, learning about positive masculinity, which does not worship superiority, which understands and integrates the notions of equity, equality and respect.
2- If Adinkra no longer had a reason to be, what would you do, assuming all resources are at your disposal?
If Adinkra no longer had a reason to exist, and I had all the necessary resources, I would go around Africa, this continent that fascinates me so much. I will explore the cultures, the differences, I will go to the people, I will exchange with them, to better understand the base on which we are sitting.
I will meet women, many women, from all cultures and from all walks of life, to look at them, to listen to them, to learn from them, and also to allow them to tell each other and then I will write books. Books that will stay and be read by many generations.
3- What is your message for young creators who don’t know where to start?
I would tell them to first work on themselves, to learn to know who they are, where they come from, to discover their trademark, and then they will know how to express themselves and how to get their messages across to the world. This is what will make the difference between an excellent creator and an average creator, who will end up looking like a lot of other creators, without knowing how to stand out. You have to find the right vein to stand out without getting lost; you have to have passion for what you do, a vision and above all boldness; it’s boldness that will open doors for you.
“Don’t wait for permission to be who you want to be, or to express who you are. No one knows what is good for you better than you do. Fear is a natural phenomenon. I, too, am sometimes afraid, much more than one can imagine, but boldness lies in the ability to overcome one’s fears. Go for it! The worst thing that can happen to you is to learn.”
