African children are hearing more stories than ever before, but not all of them are meant for them. In her article “The Role Played by Folklore in Raising Up an African Child”, Mdhululi, N.G. (2025) states that storytelling for children in Africa has evolved beyond entertainment into a powerful tool for learning, identity formation, and social engagement. This greatly informs what’s currently trending in storytelling for children across Africa.
Across digital platforms, radio, print, and community spaces, storytellers, educators, and development partners are reimagining how stories can serve diverse learner needs in ways that are culturally grounded, inclusive, informative, and forward-looking.
Several trends are now shaping the future of children’s stories in Africa, each opening opportunities for deeper impact and broader participation. In this blog, we will expound on these current trends. Shall we?
7 Trends In Storytelling for Children in Africa Today
1. Culturally Rooted, Hyper-Local Narratives
African children’s storytelling is moving beyond generic settings to stories that reflect specific places, languages, and lived experiences. Rather than abstract notions of “African culture,” storytellers are foregrounding characters and scenarios rooted in local life, from village routines to schoolyard adventures and community celebrations.
This shift not only deepens relevance for young audiences but also helps preserve cultural memory and linguistic diversity.
2. Multilingual & Mother Tongue Storytelling
Have you ever heard a story narrated in your mother tongue? Was it nostalgic? Language matters deeply in how children connect with stories. Increasingly, storytellers and programmes are using indigenous languages or bilingual formats such as Kiswahili, Dholuo, and Luyha to make narratives more accessible and affirming.
Multilingual content supports early literacy and honours linguistic heritage. This plays a huge role in embracing our local languages as mediums of learning.
Serpell, R. (2018) argues that literacy should be understood within local cultural practices such as storytelling, song, and community activities, rather than exclusively as a set of abstract school skills. In this view, learning to read and write ties directly into local oral traditions and the cultural contexts in which children grow up. This perspective highlights the value of indigenous languages and cultural practices in supporting meaningful literacy learning.
3. Audio Engagement & Read-Aloud Formats
Audio storytelling, whether through podcasts, radio, or recorded folktales, is experiencing growth, particularly because it overcomes barriers such as limited print availability and low literacy levels in certain regions.
Recently, DRM Consortium introduced the Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) radio in collaboration with EduTab Africa’s African Children’s Stories Podcast. This initiative is aimed at providing stories as learning materials through local, regional and international radio stations, making learning accessible even in remote or underserved areas.
Additionally, read-aloud sessions, often accompanied by music or sound design, create immersive learning experiences that can reach children in classrooms, homes, and community spaces. Every February, African Children’s Stories Podcast organises a read-aloud event for children, parents and teachers in celebration of World Read Aloud Day. This program takes the narrations from the studio to the ground, promoting a reading culture among learners.
4. Storytelling with Social-Emotional Learning Themes
Today’s children’s stories go beyond simple plots to weave in themes like empathy, resilience, identity, digital safety, and environmental care. These narratives support not just literacy, but social-emotional learning, helping young listeners make meaning of their feelings, actions and relationships.
Different partners in education have open-source materials that offer a wide range of themes children can learn from today. The African Storybook, for instance, has thematic stories for different learning levels, allowing learners to interact with emotions relevant to their ages.
Partners in education and child development are especially interested in storytelling that teaches soft skills without lecturing.
5. Children as Co-Creators
Another important trend is the inclusion of children as contributors, not just consumers. For instance, the African Children’s Stories podcast invites children to narrate and record stories. This participatory approach empowers young people, strengthens confidence, and generates content that truly resonates with their peers.
Co-creation also offers implementation partners a way to elevate young voices within programmes. When a 10-year-old is involved in story narration, they learn that their voices matter too in creating learning resources for them.
6. Visual & Animated Storytelling
Alongside audio, motion graphics and simple animations are growing as tools to make stories more engaging on digital platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. These visual formats help capture attention and cater to diverse learning styles, especially among younger audiences who respond to sensory stimulation and rhythm.
7. African Futurism & Imaginative Futures
There is a growing shift toward African futurism and imaginative world-building that places African children at the centre of stories about technology, adventure, exploration, and innovation. These narratives expand children’s sense of possibility and reframe Africa as a vibrant space of ideas, creativity, and imagination, not merely a setting defined by context or constraint.
Popularised by author Nnedi Okorafor, Africanfuturism emphasises futures rooted in Africa itself, stories created by people of African descent that draw from local cosmologies, ancestral knowledge, and lived realities rather than privileging Western frameworks. By blending cultural heritage with technological imagination, these narratives explore how society and innovation might evolve in ways that align with community values, ecological awareness, and non-linear understandings of time.
Through futuristic storytelling, African children are invited to imagine themselves not only as users or beneficiaries of technology, but as its designers, thinkers, and creators.
What This Means for Partners and Practitioners
Stories are no longer side content. They are tools for literacy, identity, social learning, and digital inclusion. For implementation partners, educators, funders, and edtech innovators, these trends point to several priorities:
- Design stories with children in their worlds, not at them.
- Invest in multilingual and audio-based storytelling to increase reach and inclusion.
- Involve children as creators, not just audience.
- Integrate storytelling into learning and wellbeing goals, not just entertainment.
Conclusion
Storytelling for children in Africa is undergoing an exciting transformation. It’s becoming more local, more participatory, more digitally accessible, and more purposeful. As this space evolves, there’s a shared opportunity for partners and creators to collaborate, bringing rich narratives to life in ways that support education, culture, and child development.
The question is no longer whether African children have stories, but whether the stories shaping them reflect who they are, and who they could become.
Written by Faith Wanja.
References
Serpell, R. (2018). Grounding Innovative Promotion of Literacy in Local Funds of Knowledge. Papers in Education and Development, (35). Retrieved from https://journals.udsm.ac.tz/index.php/ped/article/view/1495