Meet & Ask your Question(s)
Kinyanjui Kombani-- The Banker who Writes
As we wait to get the response from Dr. Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ, who is sifting through the questions, here is another chance to Meet & Ask your Question(s) to another outstanding writer. Kinyanjui Kombani, popularly known as “The Banker who Writes,” is an award-winning Kenyan novelist, playwright, scriptwriter and literature critic/activist.
His novels, The Last Villains of Molo and Den of Inequities have been used for undergraduate and postgraduate education by universities in and Kenya and abroad.
Kombani is a past winner of the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature 2019; the Wahome Mutahi Prize for Literature 2019 and the Burt Award for African Young Adult Literature 2018. Apart from The Last Villains of Molo andDen of Inequities, his other titles include We Can Be Friends, Wangari Maathai: Mother of Trees, Lost but Found and Mizoga.
Kombani is also a recipient of the Kenyatta University Outstanding Young Alumni Award 2014 and was recognized as a Business Daily Top 40 under 40 in 2015.
As usual, drop your questions here and Kombani will definitely answer them. Alright, let’s do this.
QUESTIONS:
1. Has the language resistance movement—particularly English—hurt Africa both financially and intellectually?
2. I see a new wave of African authors breaking free from the code-switching/Africanised-English tradition established by first-generation writers. Many now opt for standard English, aiming to write with the same precision as British authors like Mark Billingham. This is a good thing. Do you think this shift makes it easier for Africans to write genre fiction with complex, layered plots? After all, most readers just want a good story—something they can enjoy. They would sell more books and, in turn, help Africa.
3. How can we gather African authors to donate toward indigenous language schools, and truly honour the oral tradition by keeping it in oral form—through audio and video, not just books? It's time for action. Since the 1962 Makerere conference, there’s been too much talk and too little follow-through. We could start with one language group, say Gikuyu, in honour of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. None of our members is Gikuyu, but a few are already willing to contribute.
Thanks for following us back. Yes, Kinyanjui Kombani-- The Banker who Writes and Dr Mukoma Ngugi are both amazing writers.