From left: Kenya Pipeline Company’s Rachel Gathoni with writers Eric Rugara, Ciku Kimani-Mwaniki, Wambui Keiya, Ndungi Githuku and others at Mlango Farm for Sanaa.
On the last Saturday of March, Mlango Farm in Ngecha, Limuru, hosted dozens of writers and novelists, visual artists, storytellers, poets, musicians, literary stakeholders, book club founders, members of the diplomatic community, art collectors, and patrons of the arts gathered for Sanaa @Mlango Farm with Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC), a multidisciplinary networking event organised by the KPC Foundation in collaboration with eKitabu publishers.
This creative ‘Sanaa’ initiative was designed as an engaging experience of dialogue, collaboration, and creative exchange, spotlighting the problems faced by visual and literary creatives in Kenya, but with the ultimate aim of creating useful and practical connections across cultural and professional communities, at Els Breet Kamande’s lush Mlango Farm – that employs folks from the Ngecha community while growing a variety crops and nurturing the area’s deep artistic heritage. Ngecha, a renowned Gikuyu art village, is just a short drive from Nairobi, and home to painters, sculptors, and creators. The farm’s story of turning “bush into beauty” mirrored the event’s core message: Kenya’s creatives deserve the same deliberate nurturing and visibility.
Kenya Pipeline Corporation has been in blazing business headlines for its recent IPO, but they do have a very creative foundation, flowing in the background. Rachel Gathoni, KPC Foundation’s Managing Trustee and Foundation Manager, said they been searching for a niche industry to support through its CSR efforts and landed on the creative space because they have endured the longest isolation and fragmentation.
“In the creative space, since you kind of create alone, there is isolation and fragmentation,” she said. “Everyone is doing their thing and trying to access their market their own way. Access to markets is a challenge. Platforms are a challenge! The financing for them to access these big platforms is also a challenge.”
She highlighted a deeper cultural issue: many Kenyans still prefer imported toys and AI-generated foreign art over locally created Kenyan works. “We need to push so that even as Kenyans, we can be the first consumers of our art, our books, so that we can keep this sector alive.”
Will Clurman, CEO and Co-Founder of eKitabu (whose publishing arm is the Mvua Press imprint), brought the professional publisher’s perspective. eKitabu has spent its recent years championing Kenyan adult literature, promoting popular writers like Ciku Kimani Mwaniki, budding writers like Betty Kilonzo, and the 86-year-old literary legend David Mailu.
“We don’t want to do things that are just cosmetic,” Clurman stated firmly. “We want to do things that try to address the structural challenges that artists face.” His three unshakeable goals: author success, getting quality books to market, and redefining sales as “finding readers, and getting the books into their hands.”
eKitabu embraces digital tools including audiobooks and children’s programming on Akili Network, but Mr. Clurman emphasised the enduring power of the printed word: “If we focus on digital only, then we miss most of the readers that are out there. We honour the printed word… It’s on us to make the books affordable.”
The gathering confronted generative AI head-on. Gathoni offered balanced insight: technology cannot replicate the human soul in art. “Sometimes you want something because it is a human who has made it.” Yet she warned of the urgent need for stronger copyright policies, rights awareness, and protection against copying and alteration.
The KPC Foundation pledged dedicated physical spaces for artists and writers to showcase and sell their work at all KPC-sponsored corporate events, including golf tournaments, turning sponsorships into living marketplaces. It will also host “open days” at KPC workspaces, enabling staff to interact directly with creatives and support them through purchases. Most importantly, the Foundation itself is committing to become an active consumer of Kenyan paintings, books, and performances in its offices, events, and initiatives.
Gathoni framed it simply: “Art itself is the employer.”
Victoria Ijeoma, CEO Vikkie Oh Atelier, Fashion stylist, Connie Aluoch and Sandra Simbiri during the Sanaa Kenyan fashion show, a platform for designers and exhibitors held at Movenpick Hotel Nairobi on August 26, 2023.
The role of partners like KPC is to amplify, connect, and open doors so that every artist can sell their work, sustain themselves, and support their families.
At the national level of the Ministry of Culture and Heritage and other government stakeholders, the questions that must be put forth are the following from the Sanaa gathering – “Where have the robust national policies, dedicated funding streams, effective copyright enforcement, integration of arts into education, and accessible capacity-building programmes such as affordable workshops and grants? Why has the creative sector despite its proven power to tell Kenya’s story, create jobs, and drive soft cultural power often been left fragmented, informal, and starved of structural support by the State?’, ever since (CS) Ababu Namwamba exited the stage?
At KECOBO, heads like Julius Sigei have been quite pro-active, with KECOBO (Kenya Copyright Board) even taking out newspaper advertisements recently, urging creators, copyright owners and others to submit written memoranda on the proposed Copyright and Related Rights Bill of 2026.
Visual artists at the event also slammed the ten big ‘’çrimes’ of local Kenyan writers/ books:
1. Some writers have such terrible English that AI outshines them.
2. Limited humour (so much so in 2024, no one who entered their book in the Wahome Mutahi humour category won; the judges declined to award the prize, and rightfully so, in my humble, humour-free opinion).
3. They rush a lot through their writing (in the rapid, rabid dash for 'launch day' 15 minute fame hapo kwa library of one of our European institutions like Alliance Francaise, who are always generous with spaces – but their indulgence ought not be abused to roll out self-printed clap-trap).
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4. They don't trust their audience (please, people, show & don't tell is the first principle) ...
5. Not doing research (you find an assassin cutting some leader’s office tenure short by taking him out with a shot across a soccer field, - as he gives a lying speech - with a Glock)!
6. Not being in any book club (some barely even read books, but self publish plenty, because self-publication is now accessible; not even a developmental editor hired before dribbled drivel is launched, like a Shahad missile, onto the heads of an unsuspecting public).
7. There is nothing unique about the story (generic plotlines, those "my story" type books that are as dull as ditchwater to everyone but the author, who finds their own life riveting).
8. Isolating oneself (some writers are invisible in the literary community, won't be at workshops, attend fairs, but complain a lot on social media about how awful mainstream publishers are, for richly rewarding them with well deserved rejection slips for trashy work).
9. Marketing issues (distribution channels, and so on, although there are writers who spend more time on social media talking about literature and giving advice, as I am at the moment, than actually writing; after which they do need to publicly push their better mousetrap).
10. Writing for the 'White Eye.' (Please, African, love yourself enough to tell our tales, not wazunguish tales or tilting our tales to titillate the white eye, aye)? That is being inauthentic, brainwashed, neo-colonized, and often ends up catching no eye - black, brown or blue.
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Mochama’s book ‘How to be an MCA in Kenya’ will be coming out mid-year from Mvua Press.
