For two days, on September 11 and 12, the Centre Ubuntu Wetu in Beni lived to the rhythm of words. The North Kivu town, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, hosted the second edition of the Beni Book and Arts Festival, a gathering built around public readings, panel discussions, film screenings, exhibitions and workshops, all under a title that leaves little room for ambiguity: « Resisting through the pen and the spoken word. »
Around 300 seats had been announced for the event, organized by Éditions NGE, a pan-African publishing house founded in Goma in August 2023. Despite its youth, the organization managed to bring together a notable lineup of guests, including El Amidu, Dielly Lekesa, Ketya Camara and Muhindo Christian. Support from EUNIC RDC, the network that brings together European cultural institutes present in the country in Kinshasa, among them the Institut français, the Goethe-Institut and the Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles, also lent the festival a degree of international institutional backing.
Among the guests, the presence of Congolese philosopher Kä Mana drew particular attention. His work on the ethical and intellectual rebuilding of Africa after conflict is widely referenced far beyond North Kivu, and his participation gave the festival an intellectual weight that extended well past its local setting.
Choosing Beni as the host city was no accident. For years, the town and its surroundings have lived under the threat of armed groups active in the country’s east, facing repeated incursions and mass population displacement. Organizing a literary festival in such a context is as much a logistical and security challenge as a cultural one.
This edition is also no isolated attempt. A first edition had already taken place in 2025, held under the theme « Memory, Pen and Resilience, » laying the groundwork for a coherent editorial direction that the festival continues to pursue today. From one year to the next, the ambition remains the same: turning literary creation into a concrete tool for rebuilding, carried by and for a community that keeps writing despite the violence.
That may well be where the event’s true significance lies. In Beni, literature does not merely narrate North Kivu’s resilience from the outside. It becomes a lived exercise, carried out on the ground, where every public reading and every workshop stands as a quiet form of resistance against the uncertainty weighing on the region.