In 2018, three young Rwandans teamed up with a vision to bring Rwandan characters to life through comic books and illustrations for children and young people. Their organisation, Imanzi Creations, has since produced three books to create inspiring stories for young people. Credia Umuhire Ruzigana, the managing director and co-founder of Imanzi Creations, explains the need for Rwandan characters in children’s literature.
What inspired the formation of Imanzi Creations?
Growing up, we were introduced to heroic figures like Spiderman and Superman but none of them were Rwandan or came from Africa. It is not because we didn’t have them but because we were not told about them.
This is why we want to bring to life our heroic characters that the youth and kids can relate to. Children can have role models that they want to be like when they grow up in Rwanda and Africa. We want to tell tales of the children of a thousand hills. So far we have created three books; ‘Genesis’, ‘The Last Goodbye’, which are both graphic books, and ‘Ndoli’.
Tell us about these books
Genesis, the first story of the children of the 1000 hills series of stories, was inspired by the legends around the founding of the Kingdom of a thousand hills. It is written in a fiction and fantasy genre and follows Rwogera, a young man travelling with his pregnant wife, Gaju and their family, to a new world, a new home.
‘The Last Goodbye’ is a fictional-fantasy story that follows a young couple living in the kingdom of 1000 hills. Shango, an orphan raised by the army and now a guard at the royal palace, and Kwezi, the daughter of the most powerful chief in the kingdom.
‘The last goodbye’ book cover.
‘Ndoli’ is a fictional-fantasy story about a teenage prince who has lived in hiding since he was a young boy, he spends his days exploring his world with his friends and dreaming of freedom. The empire ruling his home and oppressing his people has spent years looking for the young prince, and it is now getting close to finding him.
The books can be found on Imanzi Creation’s website or Imagine Books app or on Hehe.
What are some of the challenges you have encountered?
The publishing houses in Rwanda. Printing a book is very expensive which compromises the cost of the book and as a result, people are reluctant to pay, for example Rwf15, 000 for a child’s book. Also translating the story and facts into a language that a child can understand is easy to do in English and French but not in Kinyarwanda, as the vocabulary can be very heavy for the child. There has been a bit of a gap between the government and the authors when we try to translate in simpler Kinyarwanda and only to be told it is not correct vocabulary.
How does Imanzi Creations seek to set itself apart from other authors that write children’s books?
What we are giving the youth and children of Rwanda is three in one; their culture, their history and a new story. We are giving all this to a 12-year-old up to a teenager of 18 — all that combined in one book. Each of those young people will relate to themselves while reading our books.
What are some of your long term goals for Imanzi creations?
Our long term goal is to have a brand which is the children of a thousand hills and be one of the marks of Rwanda. Rwanda is known to have gorillas, the Kigali Convention Center and a country of a thousand hills. But we want it to be known as one that has heroic characters like Ndoli and Ndabaga. We want to bring the version that people have never seen was always there. We want to inspire other African countries to bring to life their own characters. We need to hear their tales and pass them on to generations and generations so that they don’t fade. Also, with time, we want to be able to have products on the market where children will be requesting for school bags with Rwandan characters that will have made a mark in the lives of those children.
--