The author
Maud-Salomé Ekila is a Congolese journalist, reporter, and filmmaker based in Kinshasa. A pan-Africanist and civil society activist, she is also the spokesperson for Urgences Panafricanistes, the citizens' movement founded by Kemi Seba.
She has worked for several years for Congolese television stations, as well as for various media outlets broadcasting in French-speaking Africa, Europe, and the United States. For two years, she directed the private channel Télé Haïti, where she was also editor-in-chief, in Port-au-Prince.
A director of historical and current affairs documentaries, she currently designs and presents two geopolitical and current affairs programs on the media channel Afrique Résurrection.
Much of her work is devoted to citizen mobilization, the duty of remembrance, the fight against imperialism and neocolonialism in Africa, and the promotion of a more equitable society based on pan-Africanism, sharing, and solidarity. Her research focuses on both Africa and Afro-descendant communities around the world.
Through her work, she highlights the self-determination of African societies and the rediscovery of identities erased by colonization and slavery. She advocates for the reconstruction of Black Africa based on unity, deep respect for African cultures and identities, and the implementation of economic, political, and social models aligned with African paradigms.
She regularly speaks on the themes of transitional justice, the Congolese genocides, the transgenerational transmission of trauma, as well as the geopolitical and economic implications of the crises in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
In 2012, she became communications officer for Dr. Denis Mukwege, for whom she worked for ten years, primarily on transitional justice issues. During this period, she coordinated a project supporting victims and survivors of sexual violence, an experience marked by intense fieldwork in the DRC, a country to which she has a deep attachment.
Her first audiobook, Kesho, led to two musical cartoons: Maïko and Ban'a Mayi. She is currently working on volumes 2 and 3, as well as new cartoons based on Kesho.
Why did you produce KESHO, 13 Histoires et Nursery Rhymes of Africa?
“Becoming a mother changes your life. Motherhood changes the body, but above all the mind.
As a Congolese journalist, pan-Africanist and activist, I have always wanted to find these parts of History deliberately erased from books. A History torn out and removed piece by piece in an attempt to make the many cultures and spiritualities of the African continent disappear.
This need to rediscover our specificities, our identities, our songs and our lullabies has increased with motherhood.
I quickly noticed that it was not easy to obtain children's works, books or sound traces of nursery rhymes from Black Africa. Our numerous writings are themselves difficult to find, thus conveying this false idea that Africans operate solely on a tradition of oral transmission. Fortunately, Africans and Afro-descendants from all over the world have managed, as best they can, to preserve our rich cultural heritage, sometimes paying for it with their lives.
For thousands of years, our ancestors have preserved these treasures generation after generation. They sang us nursery rhymes and transmitted values and our memory to us through tales and other forms of stories.
It is important to remember: “A people without memory is a people without a future.”
So it was obvious. The popular lullabies I sang to my daughter needed to be compiled into a book so other moms and dads could find them. So that those who have been deprived of their roots, whatever the reasons, can find pieces of them and never lose them again.
May moms and dads from other cultures and other continents be able to discover these wonders of African heritage, these wonders of the world. "