Sterling Bank has renewed its partnership with the Aké Arts and Book Festival as the festival returns to Lagos from November 19 to 21, 2026.
The festival is one of Africa’s foremost gatherings of writers, artists and thinkers.
This year’s theme is ‘Native Intelligence’. It will examine the relationship between knowledge Africans have developed and passed down for generations and artificial intelligence systems increasingly shaping how people live, learn, work and communicate.
The theme stems from a simple fact: Africa was thinking long before machines were.
The elder, the proverb and the folktale represent systems of knowledge refined over centuries. Today, artificial intelligence is changing how stories are told, how elections are fought and how truth is reported. Yet questions remain about how African languages, experiences and cultural contexts are represented.
For Sterling Bank, which has supported the festival since 2018, the partnership represents continued investment in people and ideas shaping Africa’s cultural and intellectual future.
Over the years, Aké has provided a meeting point for established and emerging writers, artists and thinkers. It has brought together more than 1,000 creative voices and created opportunities for African stories to reach wider audiences.
Speaking, Donatus Okpako, Chief Marketing Officer at Sterling Bank, said every society has an intelligence – the instinct and judgement used to read a situation and solve a problem.
“Africans have always had it in abundance. As AI reshapes how we work, bank, vote and learn, the real concern is whether Africa’s own ways of thinking help shape the technology it relies on. For fourteen years, Aké has placed African ideas at the centre of global conversations. That is a platform worth standing behind,” he said.
‘Native Intelligence’ does not treat African knowledge as a relic to be kept behind glass. It treats it as a living intelligence with a claim on the future.
Over three days, novelists, poets, journalists, technologists, filmmakers and scholars will examine who gets to decide what counts as knowledge. They will ask the question at the heart of the festival: whose intelligence are we building the future on?
Lola Shoneyin, Founder and Director of the Aké Arts and Book Festival, said a machine knows only what it has been fed, and it has not been fed much of Africa.
“Native Intelligence is about power: who decides what is true, what is worth remembering, and whose voice the future speaks in? Sterling understands our goal to support and celebrate creativity on the African continent and beyond. We are delighted to work with them again,” she said.
The festival programme includes book chats, panel discussions, film screenings, conversations, poetry performances and music.
