This year alone, I’ve sat in multiple rooms, both in person and virtual, on the continent and in the diaspora, where literary adaptations were discussed. And almost every time, a central question asked was: Why aren’t there more?
So I started pulling threads, grounded in my past coverage, current conversations, and recent data like the European Audiovisual Observatory’s May 2025 report (released late last month).
Akoroko Premium subscribers recently received a snapshot of what adaptation really looks like in the African screen context, including what drives it, what gets in its way, and who is starting to build for the long term.
Spoiler: it’s not widespread. But the ground is shifting, and the next wave won’t look like what came before.
🎧 Prefer to listen? 10-minute audio version available.
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[Pictured is one of my favorite novels, and potentially unfilmable—not as a literal adaptation anyway: the late Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s “Wizard of the Crow”]