Nairobi, Kenya, March 9, 2022
Nsemia Inc. Publishers congratulates UN SDG Book Club African Chapter authors, Christopher Okemwa (Kenya) and Lorato Trok (South Africa) for their nomination to participate in the 2022 Sharjah Children’s Reading Festival planned for May 11th – May 22nd, 2022.
This is a great honour and recognition for the two authors, and a boundless opportunity to enhance the presence of written works from the African continent in the rest of the world, specifically on the subject of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
According to Borders, the Club’s publicist, “this arrangement follows a collaborative agreement between the management committee of the UN SDG Book Club African Chapter and organizers of Sharjah Children’s Reading Festival/Sharjah International Book Fair. It also involves Borders in recommending accomplished SDG Book Club Africa authors for participation in Sharjah book events.”
Established in 1982, the Sharjah International Book Fair one of the largest book fairs in the entire world. According to reports, in 2021 more than 1,500 publishers from more than 80 countries participated in the event and displayed more than 15 million books in the process.
We appreciate the thought leadership demonstrated in this initiative that stands to enhance collaboration, understanding, and appreciation of the diverse values and cultures of peoples of this planet.
We are proud to be the publisher of Chris Okemwa’s many works, two of which have been accepted as SDG Book Club titles, namely Sabina the Rain Girl, and Chubot the Cursed One and Other Stories were accepted as Club titles in SDG 2 (No Hunger) and SDG 5 (Gender Equality), respectively. 
Among titles we have published that are in the SDG Book Club is PGN Mbugwa’s Chokora! A Kenyan Scavenger listed under SDG 2 – No Hunger.
Okemwa’s Sabina and the Mystery of the Ogre was the winner of the Burt Award for Literature 2015 (Kenya). Other titles by Okemwa include Oral Poetry in Africa: the Abagusii of Kenya, Riddles of Abagusii of Kenya, and Proverbs of Abagusii of Kenya: Application and Meaning; among his poetry collections are The Gong and Ominous Clouds.
About the UN SDG Book Club African Chapter
The SDG Book Club African Chapter aims to use books as a tool to encourage children ages 6-12 to interact with the principles of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through a curated reading list of books from around the African continent related to each of the 17 SDGs in—Arabic, English, French, and Kiswahili.