How It Came to Be

Once upon a time in Ghana, an 11 year old girl borrowed her first library book and quickly fell in love with reading. In her free time, she was always found nose deep in books and constantly lived in this new found world. One day, she was asked by a group of her father’s friends what she wanted to be when she grew up. "An amateur detective!” the little girl responded proudly, “just like my favorite storybook character, Nancy Drew” The adults burst out laughing. “Does she mean she wants to be a police woman?” one of them asked. “Maybe she wants to direct traffic,” said another. “Hahahaha.”The little girl stood there wondering what was funny about what she had said. Her father gently broke it to her that the dreams she had were based on Western books and culture and unrealistic to her life. The Western characters who had become her beloved heroes and the foundation of her ambitions, were completely out of context in Accra, Ghana, where she was growing up.

Many years later, as a college freshman the girl started an organization to ship American books to various libraries across the African continent. But she kept wondering if she could do more. With the support of a wonderful mentor and her co-founder, Rama Shagaya, she started an organization named Golden Baobab to inspire African writers and illustrators to create delightful stories for children.