Literature and Education

Ishyo Arts Centre has initiated and contributed in different educative programs and projects. Some of them are ‘The Bibliobus’- a 15-meter long bus carrying thousands of books and traveling with librarians and professional storytellers to various district schools in the country.

This Bibliobus started in the City of Kigali in 2007, and with the help of staff librarians and storytellers, thousands of students were able to develop a stronger culture for reading, travel through the world of words and discover new cultures and concepts, and new ways to represent themselves in relation to others.

Another initiative is the library Espace Madiba. Espace Madiba was started in May 2014, in the framework of the project Littafcar, which aims at promoting African and Caribbean literatures and regroups CEC (Belgium), Artisttik (Benin) and Fokal (Haiti).

It has two sections: the kids section and the adults section. Espace Madiba has more than 5000 books from different genres such as novels, short stories, poetry, plays, storybooks, comics etc.

Espace Madiba hosts various cultural activities focusing on the book, such as storytelling, re-enactment of stories read, creative writing, borrowing books, writing workshops, facilitating book launches, book cafés, creation of journals etc.

To this day, more than 6 book cafés have taken place with authors like Scholastique Mukasonga (Rwanda), Marie-Louise Bibish Mumbu (D.R.C), Eugene Ebode (Cameroon), Roland Rugero (Burundi) etc. These authors while on their stay also facilitate workshops for literature professionals, children, students in literature, authors.

For the kids section: the registration fee for is of 5000 Rwf for one child per term or 15000 Rwf per year, while for the adults section, the registration fee is of 10 000 Rwf per person for a semester. This registration allows the registered to borrow books, participate in the activities of Espace Madiba. Anyone can get registered by paying this amount of money at Espace Madiba and receive all the instructions from our librarians thereafter.

Espace Madiba is open:

  • Kids section: Monday to Friday: 9 am – 5pm
  • Adults section: Thursday, 2 pm – 8 pm; Saturday, 10 am – 2 pm.

Espace Madiba is located in the offices of Ishyo Arts Centre, at Ecole Internationale de Kigali/ Kimihurura

For more info please contact us:

You can also like Espace Madiba’s page on Facebook/ Espace Madiba or follow us on Twitter/ IshyoArts to get updates on our activities, quotes by authors, articles etc.