Olatoun Gabi-Williams
Olatoun Gabi-Williams has many years of experience delivering spoken and written word content around literary culture, advocacy and education. She has delivered numerous assignments on television, on radio and on live platforms to advance her dual missions to promote an appreciation of good books in Nigeria and Africa and to promote child literacy, education and welfare in Nigerian institutions. Her broadcasts span: Channels TV “Sunrise” and NTA 2 Channel 5, “AM Express”, “Close Flow”, “City Lace” and Smooth Radio’s “Smooth Review”.
She was TV host at the 1st Nigerian Cultural Trade show held October 2nd 2014 and organised by the Nigerian German Business Association, AHK (Delegation of German Industry & Commerce in Nigeria), Goëthe Institute (German Cultural Centre) and the Consulate of Germany in Lagos.
Olatoun Gabi-Williams is the Managing Director of Selina Ventures Ltd & Selina Travels Ltd and Founder/Coordinator of Sponsor A Child Nigeria, a small charity with a wide reach whose flagship projects improve child literacy, education and welfare in Nigerian institutions.
http://bordersliteratureonline.net/
Phone: +2347025209415
Address: Selina House, 4, Idowu Martins Street, VI, Lagos 101241
She was TV host at the 1st Nigerian Cultural Trade show held October 2nd 2014 and organised by the Nigerian German Business Association, AHK (Delegation of German Industry & Commerce in Nigeria), Goëthe Institute (German Cultural Centre) and the Consulate of Germany in Lagos.
Olatoun Gabi-Williams is the Managing Director of Selina Ventures Ltd & Selina Travels Ltd and Founder/Coordinator of Sponsor A Child Nigeria, a small charity with a wide reach whose flagship projects improve child literacy, education and welfare in Nigerian institutions.
http://bordersliteratureonline.net/
Phone: +2347025209415
Address: Selina House, 4, Idowu Martins Street, VI, Lagos 101241
less
InterestsView All (28)
Uploads
Videos by Olatoun Gabi-Williams
anthropologist.
In the full interview Keith Hart talks about the informal economy, the concept he contributed to Development Studies, about money, about the intellectual revolution which is fomenting, the digital revolution already upon us and Africa’s coming revolution in the 21st century
Holding up a mirror to the history and current realities of South Africa, his prodigious work includes radio and stage plays and novels that have been translated into 21 languages. For his contributions to the canon of contemporary African literature, he has received some of the most important awards: The Playwright of the Year in South Africa.
"The SDG Book Club African Chapter unlocks the ambitions of the Sustainable Developments Goals through relatable stories which young children can be inspired by. The narrative in a children's book provides the perfect platform to create teachable moments and examples around the SDGs and the importance of taking action. Reading is a fundamental skill upon which the acquisition of many other skills is based upon. What better way to explore the SDGs than through a book." Anthea Basson, National Information Officer, UNIC Namibia
Taken from her statement in the UN SDG Book Club African Chapter Press Release: January 25th 2021
BOOK REVIEWS by Olatoun Gabi-Williams
Curious Alice, as a graduate student, would happily lose herself in this wonderland Professor Hart has created, knowing that at the end of her adventures, a revivifyed self, ready for action, awaits her.
Omilara means “the family are like water” so it is no wonder that Omilara should be the spiritual child of the Da Costa family; the waking dreamer, the seer, since childhood, of the “Daddy people” That it should be Lara’s eyes that come to “rest on a woman whose fathomless gaze unravel such love in (her) she feels faint with it…” This woman is Zenobia – her paternal grandmother who speaks to her from eternity and takes her on a journey “into memory” so that damp musky earth, saccharine and vanilla scents, reach Lara from the Brazilian plantation on which her ancestor, Tolulope, toils as a slave, and on which she is raped by its owner.
Published: 1948
ISBN-10: 0743262174
ISBN-13: 978-0743262170
pp 316; Price: $9.79
Reviewed by: Olatoun Williams
http://bordersliteratureonline.net/books/Cry-The-Beloved-Country
Winner of the Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman
Winner of the Prix des Cinq Continents
Winner of the Prix Francois Mauriac
Longlisted for the FT/OppenheimerFunds Emerging Voices Award
Published: 2013
ISBN-10: 1590517512
ISBN-13: 978-1590517512
pp 160; Price: $9.90
Reviewed by: Olatoun Williams
http://bordersliteratureonline.net/books/The-Meursault-Investigation
Translated from the French by Roland Glasser
Published: 2015
ISBN-10: 1941920047
ISBN-13: 978-1941920046
pp 224; Price: $12.37
Reviewed by: Olatoun Gabi-Williams
http://bordersliteratureonline.net/books/Tram-83
anthropologist.
In the full interview Keith Hart talks about the informal economy, the concept he contributed to Development Studies, about money, about the intellectual revolution which is fomenting, the digital revolution already upon us and Africa’s coming revolution in the 21st century
Holding up a mirror to the history and current realities of South Africa, his prodigious work includes radio and stage plays and novels that have been translated into 21 languages. For his contributions to the canon of contemporary African literature, he has received some of the most important awards: The Playwright of the Year in South Africa.
"The SDG Book Club African Chapter unlocks the ambitions of the Sustainable Developments Goals through relatable stories which young children can be inspired by. The narrative in a children's book provides the perfect platform to create teachable moments and examples around the SDGs and the importance of taking action. Reading is a fundamental skill upon which the acquisition of many other skills is based upon. What better way to explore the SDGs than through a book." Anthea Basson, National Information Officer, UNIC Namibia
Taken from her statement in the UN SDG Book Club African Chapter Press Release: January 25th 2021
Curious Alice, as a graduate student, would happily lose herself in this wonderland Professor Hart has created, knowing that at the end of her adventures, a revivifyed self, ready for action, awaits her.
Omilara means “the family are like water” so it is no wonder that Omilara should be the spiritual child of the Da Costa family; the waking dreamer, the seer, since childhood, of the “Daddy people” That it should be Lara’s eyes that come to “rest on a woman whose fathomless gaze unravel such love in (her) she feels faint with it…” This woman is Zenobia – her paternal grandmother who speaks to her from eternity and takes her on a journey “into memory” so that damp musky earth, saccharine and vanilla scents, reach Lara from the Brazilian plantation on which her ancestor, Tolulope, toils as a slave, and on which she is raped by its owner.
Published: 1948
ISBN-10: 0743262174
ISBN-13: 978-0743262170
pp 316; Price: $9.79
Reviewed by: Olatoun Williams
http://bordersliteratureonline.net/books/Cry-The-Beloved-Country
Winner of the Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman
Winner of the Prix des Cinq Continents
Winner of the Prix Francois Mauriac
Longlisted for the FT/OppenheimerFunds Emerging Voices Award
Published: 2013
ISBN-10: 1590517512
ISBN-13: 978-1590517512
pp 160; Price: $9.90
Reviewed by: Olatoun Williams
http://bordersliteratureonline.net/books/The-Meursault-Investigation
Translated from the French by Roland Glasser
Published: 2015
ISBN-10: 1941920047
ISBN-13: 978-1941920046
pp 224; Price: $12.37
Reviewed by: Olatoun Gabi-Williams
http://bordersliteratureonline.net/books/Tram-83
Published: 2008
ISBN-10: 977416153X
ISBN-13: 978-9774161537
pp 152; Price: $24.95
Reviewed by: Olatoun Williams
http://bordersliteratureonline.net/books/Cairos-Street-Stories
Published: 1990
ISBN13: 978-0435905781
ISBN-10: 0435905783
pp 128;
Price: $5.99
http://bordersliteratureonline.net/books/A-Woman-Alone
Published: 2007
ISBN13: 978-0307385901
ISBN-10: 9780307385901
ASIN: 0307385906
pp 560;
Price: $13.78
http://bordersliteratureonline.net/books/What-Is-the-What
Published: 2016;
ISBN13: 978-0385542364;
ISBN-10: 0385542364;
pp 320;
Price: $15.41.
http://bordersliteratureonline.net/books/The-Underground-Railroad
The historic Underground Railroad of America which made legends of Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass was not located underground nor was it a railroad. A loose organised network with no clear, defined routes, the word underground relays the secrecy of the network's activities and the fear of exposure of slaves fleeing the hell of the confederate states. In his fictional interpretation of The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead keeps faith with recorded history in important ways even pasting as visual props and as prefaces to chapters, notices about runaway slaves with slave profiles and specifics about rewards for their capture. Rampaging the book's pages are the hordes of feral patrollers and slave catchers he unleashes, their blood singing as they go nigger hunting.
Published: October 2018;
ISBN: 978-1-911373-39-1;
eBook ISBN: 978-1-911373-42-1
Pages: 32;
Price: £11.99;
http://bordersliteratureonline.net/books/Sing-to-the-Moon
Sing to the Moon, picture book for children distinguished by its light, quirky images and gentle presentation of diversity.
Published: 2003;
ISBN: 978-1-68097-456-0. 90000;
Pages: 386;
Format: Hardback
http://bordersliteratureonline.net/books/Missing-When-the-Son-Sets
Jaryd Atadero vanished 18 years ago under mysterious circumstances in the Colorado Rocky Mountains of North America. He was 3 years old. His father, Allyn Atadero, a physical education instructor at a middle–school in Littleton, Colorado, has written about his son’s disappearance in a book entitled ‘Missing: When the Son Sets’. I have seen ‘Missing 411’ the documentary film made by the group, CANAM Missing, about Jaryd's disappearance and I have read Allyn Atadero’s book. This is what I learned about the events leading up to the tragedy.
Oshoko's book is a compelling and colourful record of key events leading up to and
immediately after the annulment of the democratic elections held on that fateful day
in modern Nigeria's history. The annulment was a slap in the face of Nigerians, as
controversial and mysterious in intent as the president who decreed it, President
Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, the then military head of state aka 'Maradona'
because of his cunning, his “dribbling” tactics as a politician. Abraham Oshoko has
chosen to recount this pivotal moment in Nigeria's history not as a conventional text
based narrative but in comic book form packed with wonderful graphic art, vibrant
dialogue, exciting intros, segues, suspense and for many, crucial thought bubbles
thrown in generously to provide insight into what to millions of Nigerians were the
incomprehensible motives of the perpetrators of the annulment.
He currently runs YEMAJA, an editorial services agency. He also has a small publishing company, The New Gong: www.thenewgong.com, and maintains a blog: http://www.majapearce.blogspot.com.
He is married to Juliet Ezenwa, the artist: www.julietezenwa.com.
Jonathan Haynes is interested in how literature, film and other arts are related to the cultures and societies that produce them. At first, English Renaissance Literature was the main focus of his studies, but then his interests shifted to Third World film and literature and African Studies. For two decades he has been closely following the growth of the Nigerian film industry, Nollywood.
He came to Long Island University's Southampton College in 1998 and to Brooklyn in 2004. In 2001-2002, he was the founding director of the West African Center of the Friends World Program (now LIU Global) in Kumasi, Ghana. He has also taught at the American University in Cairo (Egypt), Tufts University, Albion College, Bennington College, and Columbia University. He spent three years in Nigeria as a Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Nigeria-Nsukka, Ahmadu Bello University, and the University of Ibadan. He was a guest professor at the University of Cologne in Germany.
He is the author of the seminal book 'Nollywood: The Creation of Nigerian Film Genres'
Back in the arena, a sequence of rapid and fortuitous events opened the door for him into publishing and this is the industry he has come to embrace as his true home. Gbenro Adegbola is one of those men who combine high level capacities across a range of fields with a disarming simplicity and friendliness. For a man who describes himself as perennially shy, he is remarkably, if gently, self-assured. He spoke to me about Nigerian publishing, Nigerian publishing history, and the prospects of the Nigerian book industry confronted with the menace of piracy.
From birth, Salami’s life has played out against an uncommonly rich backdrop of diversity: geographic, cultural, linguistic and religious. Scheduled for release at midnight on New Year’s Eve and to usher us into the hope of 2023, this interview sees Salami address a range of issues that are the focus of Sensuous Knowledge such as the tyranny of europatriarchal knowledge - the fitting term she coined. We discuss important if curious topics here also such as the branching pattern she expounds upon in the book which characterizes and binds the natural world in an ecosystem rooted in reciprocity and protest.
Ultimately, the philosophical axis around which her themes spin is anchored in her heritage of plurality whose bequest is an outsider-insider status and a lifetime of inhabiting the liminal spaces. This bequest is the price Salami has paid for a world-view that shimmers with real hope for our planet and its people and Sensuous Knowledge is her vision - luminous and fully realisable - for our world.
Her crusade began in 2009, with the foundation of the Emirates Publishers Association. EPA lost no time in transforming the once slow and archaic publishing industry of the United Arab Emirates into a regional and global heavy hitter. New narratives about UAE’s publishing are being written everyday thanks for example to the creation of Sharjah Book Authority (SBA) established in 2014. On the world stage, the Authority is advancing the cause of publishing by means of strategic alliances with the IPA, one of which – the IPA Academy - Al Qasimi talks about in the discussion that follows. In her native Sharjah, the Authority is custodian to behemoth events which have become central to the global publishing calendar: Sharjah Children’s Reading Festival which Al Qasimi founded in 2009 and the Sharjah International Book Fair, which is considered, after the trade fairs of Frankfurt and London , the most important book fair in the world. And likely the most glamorous.
At the IPA where her tenure as President ends on December 31st 2022, she is recognized as a dynamic, tireless, resourceful and imaginative leader. These descriptors, as well as her high visibility, will make her appear very unusual indeed to those in the industry and outside it held hostage by tropes about muslim Arab woman. Towards the end of our rich, wide-ranging conversation, she addresses the issues of perception, racial and cultural stereotyping and the perplexing ignorance of people who live in an era where knowledge is so easy to access.
In this interview, Hart expounds ideas he has published in his revolutionary memoir, Self in the World: Connecting Life’s Extremes, a high-powered, fast- paced, totally engrossing conversation with his readers. He achieves what only the best writers can: help us acquire a clear and hopeful understanding of our own place in history by combining autobiography with speculation about the world.
Dr. Jama Musse Jama, founder of the Hargeysa International Book Fair, is a large-hearted intellectual. Somaliland continues to make room for this returnee despite initial scepticism about his approaches to nation-building - not with science and economic formulae but with his belief in the sacredness of the human being and by a consistent and strategic application of the arts to demonstrate it.
comprised of 5 stories - each of which carries the weight and if not the length, certainly the scope of a novel. With ruthless honesty and compassion, the then Catholic priest, turned our gaze away from our comforts towards the beautiful faces and trembling hearts and bodies of children at crisis point in Nigeria, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Kenya, the Republic of Benin. Across the span of politically, economically and morally ravaged countries, we met beautiful children put in danger by adults with a duty to protect them. 13 years have come and gone since Uwem Akpan broke our hearts with those dirges of betrayed childhood – a long, long hiatus.
Published in the final months of 2021, Akpan’s latest offering, New York, My Village is firmly adult territory with the exception of a precocious little girl of Annang descent living in the Bronx. Where Akpan’s first novel was a cauldron of unrelieved suffering, throughout this novel, whole passages are written as comedy. New York and New Jersey are presented to us through the eyes and experiences of Ekong, the narrator who is of Annang descent. He is eager to make friends in the big city of bright lights.
But it takes the huge swarms of bed bugs laying siege on the divided humans of New York to unite them in comical scenes. What kills the joy of Ekong’s New York residency in a publishing firm are difficult fealties and racial politics which the author puts at the service of the people of Ikot Ituno-Ekanem, a far-away village in the Niger-Delta of Nigeria. Racial politics in NYC and New Jersey quickly become the evil axes around which they negotiate their own tribal politics and the shame, the guilt and the contested histories of Biafra, Nigeria’s civil war of 1967- 1970.
“Well, we had to break a few laws.”
Borders Interview with Gill Moodie, Publisher of The President’s Keepers: Those keeping Zuma in Power and out of Prison.
http://bordersliteratureonline.net/globaldetail/Gill-Moodie
http://bordersliteratureonline.net/globaldetail/Emmanuel-Iduma
http://bordersliteratureonline.net/globaldetail/Wole_Talabi
http://bordersliteratureonline.net/globaldetail/Lesley-Lababidi
Olatoun Gabi-Williams of BORDERS LITERATURE FOR ALL NATIONS reviews the recently held International Publishers Association Nairobi Seminar
14th - 15th June 2019
Hosted in Nairobi, Kenya
http://bordersliteratureonline.net/eventdetails/IPA-Nairobi-Seminar
Olatoun Gabi-Williams of BORDERS LITERATURE FOR ALL NATIONS reviews the recently held 2018 book party for Prize on Borders
http://bordersliteratureonline.net/eventdetails/Cora-the-Nigeria-Literature-Prize-2018-Book-Party
Published: 2018;
ISBN: 978-1-78026-461-5; 978-1-78026-462-2; 978-1-4314-2758-1
Pages: 284;
Format: Paper back
I picked up my copy of Redemption Song from the publisher, New Internationalist, which had set up a small stand in the foyer outside SOAS’s Khalili Lecture Theatre and went in to enjoy a short event which saw South Africa’s Stacy Hardy and Nigeria’s Wole Talabi speaking with impressive clarity during the plenary session. I began to read on my tube journey home. Joining the five shortlisted stories whose authors I had just been listening to, are twelve other stories written by authors at different stages of emergence. From countries across Sub-Saharan Africa, including Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa, the twelve writers convened in March earlier this year to produce short stories at the 2018 Caine Prize Workshop held in Gisenyi, Rwanda.
at the Symposium Organised by the
National Association of Student Social Workers
(NASOWS, UNIVERSITY OF LAGOS CHAPTER)
Presentation Date: Wednesday 12th November 2014
pp 5
This participation manual introduces and explains various activities which enable child participation from the simplest level of participation to full children's agency. You will find useful information about helping children through the process of decision making. You will find a ladder of participation to help you understand the levels of participation mentioned above and you will find a tool for measuring the level of participation of any particular activity you as an educator choose to use in your classroom or institution. The manual also provides a useful list of the participation rights of children.
This mini-manual is an expansion of the module "The Evolving Capacities of Children" which forms part of Local Champions - A Caregivers Manual for At Risk Children in Nigerian Child Institutons published in 2009 with funding from Procter & Gamble Nigeria.
Local Champions is the caregiver training manual at the heart of the Good Home Quality Serevice Advocacy Scheme (Good Home Scheme) which includes: monitoring tools for general use in child care and education; monitoring tools for Early Childhood Care and Education and user friendly reporting templates which provide ‘How To’ specimen reports based on evaluations conducted using the manuals from the Good Home. Quality Service Advocacy Scheme™ toolkit.
These manuals are: ‘Transitions: Self Audit & Monitoring Tools for Early Years Centres in Nigeria’ and the Good Home Guide: Self-Audit & Monitoring Tools for Child Institutions’. The Good Home Guide reporting template is structured around the 6 ‘child friendly’ criteria introduced by the Guide.
The child friendly criteria form the basis of the evaluation exercise. The criteria require institutions to be: healthy, inclusive of all and gender sensitive, protective of all, academically effective for all, participatory and endowed with a committed and effective leadership.
The Transitions reporting template is structured around the 4 Good Home judgements which evaluate the 10 Good Home Early Years Requirements (GHEYR) developed by the Transitions project. The template helps measure the implementation of the National Policy on Integrated Early Childhood Development and helps monitor policy based outcomes within the limits of the institution’s care provision.
The pilot Good Home Scheme caregivers training program was sponsored by the Human Rights Fund of the Embassy of France Nigeria in 2014.
Implementing the Participation Rights of Children in Institutions
Paper by Olatoun Williams;
Published by Selina Publications Selina House,
4, Idowu Martins Street, Victoria Island, Lagos, Nigeria.
Mobile: +234 702 520 9415
ISBN: 978-978-919-895-5 is the ISBN number is for Local Champions: A Caregivers Manual for at Risk Children in Nigerian Institutions. Implementing the Participation Rights of Children in Institutions is an expansion of the training module: The Evolving Capacities of Children on page 83 )
Email: info@sponsorachildnigeria.org/sponsormychild@yahoo.com;
Website: www.sponsorachildnigeria.org (under reconstruction)
Paper by Olatoun Williams;
Published by Selina Publications
Selina House, 4, Idowu Martins Street,
Victoria Island, Lagos, Nigeria.
+234 803 344 7167;
ISBN: 978-978-919-895-5;
Email: info@sponsorachildnigeria.org/sponsormychild@yahoo.com;
Website: www.sponsorachildnigeria.org
Interview with Olatoun Gab-Williams
The Guardian Newspaper
‘Children of Signatures’ in which I found some piercingly beautiful lamentations about Africa. One of Lagunju’s latest offerings, is ‘The African in the Mirror’, a work of prose in which the dirge of Signatures escalates into protest and a rigorous prosecution of the African man as architect, through compliance, of his own misfortunes. Polemical but not strident, ‘The African in the Mirror’ is an honest and brave examination delivered in about 122 pages.
Blogpost at the School of Policy Studies:
https://policystudies.blogs.bristol.ac.uk/2022/02/15/situating-chimamanda-adichies-purple-hibiscus-in-the-child-welfare-policy-context-in-nigeria/
Reading on YouTube
https://youtu.be/gXtej4K5les