Our method
From the storyteller’s voice to the book in your hands
An African tale is not found in a library: it is told. Since 2020, from Abidjan, Ultimes Griots has been collecting stories from the oral tradition of Africa’s 54 countries and turning them into illustrated books, comics, a podcast and an app. Here is how.
Four steps, in this order
Each one determines the next. That is what separates a collected tale from a tale rewritten from an already published collection.
Collecting, from the keepers
The stories are gathered directly from griots and local storytellers — the women and men to whom the tradition was passed down orally. This is the primary source, before anything is written down.
Cultural verification
Every story is reread and checked by contributors and regional African experts. The same story changes its name, its details or its moral from one area to another: this check exists so that the published version stays faithful to the one entrusted to us.
Illustration, by African artists
The images are created by African illustrators. A child should be able to recognize themselves in the faces, gestures and landscapes of the book they are holding — that is the heart of our mission of positive representation.
Formatting, according to use
The same heritage becomes an illustrated collection to read at bedtime, a comic book for older readers, a podcast episode or an audio tale narrated in the app. The format changes; the source does not.
What this guarantees
What the process produces
Four forms, one source.
Why we do this
To awaken the hero in every African child. A child who only reads stories from elsewhere ends up believing that heroes come from elsewhere. Our work is to put back within their reach a heritage that already belongs to them.