Zimbabwe's ALMA Nominee Among 277 Global Giants
Article by Edwin Muketiwa Msipa aka Black Mampara
When the Swedish Arts Council announced 277 nominees from 80 countries for the 2027 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (ALMA), the world's richest children's literature prize, the list read like a Who's Who of global giants. American bestsellers. French literary stars. Japanese manga legends.
And then, from a small publishing house in Norton, 40km west of Harare, a name that made Zimbabweans stop scrolling: Aleck Kaposa.
Kaposa is not a household name in Stockholm. But in Ellis Robins Boys High dormitories, in Book Cafe's old Five Avenue open mics, in the WhatsApp groups where Zimbabwean writers share drafts at 2am, he is known simply as "the builder."
The 2027 ALMA nomination - the first time a Norton-based publisher has made it to this level - is not just a personal triumph. It is the most Astrid Lindgren story among all 277 nominees. If Astrid taught us anything, it is that the biggest stories come from the smallest towns, and the greatest power is not writing _for_ children, but building a world where children can write for themselves.
From Robins Monitor to Grassroots Builder
Kaposa's story begins not in a university creative writing class, but at Ellis Robins Boys High in Harare, where for six years he wrote for and edited _The Robins Monitor_ school magazine. That early editorship taught him what most writers never learn: that your job is not just to write your story, but to make space for other stories.
That principle followed him to the Budding Writers Association of Zimbabwe (BWAZ) - Norton Chapter, which he chaired from 2000-2004. In the dark years of Zimbabwean publishing, when the big houses closed doors between 2008-2015, BWAZ was a lifeline. With it he started Knowtown News and The New Voices Magazine. New Voices earned a NAMA nomination in 2008 for Outstanding First Creative Published Work - proof that a photocopied magazine from Norton could compete with Harare's best.
He took his poems to the old Book Cafe, to ZiFM, Spot FM, Heart and Soul TV. He won second prize in the Grassroots Books national book review competition in 1996. But his real turn came in 2012.
Essential Books: The Publishing House That Refuses to Die
"I founded Essential Books because no one was publishing us," Kaposa once said.
Essential Books Publishing Company, based in Norton, is today arguably the most important children's publishing gateway of the last decade. While others waited for donor funding, Kaposa used his own resources to publish: A Bag of Memories (2013) - his own short story anthology, The Magician (2017) - his NAMA-nominated children's collection that includes The Magician and Other Stories, There Was a Fly (2017) and The Big Yellow Train (2017), Essentials Verses - the poetry anthology he edited, featuring Tracy Masocha, Hleko Vuma, Shadreck Muzadzi and others, which he describes as "powerful and moving that conveys lived and imagined experiences."
More importantly, he published others: Kuku Wins the President's Clean Environment Award - NAMA attention 2020, Auntie Mazvita by Tinashe Muchuri - NAMA nominated 2022, The Cursing Tortoise by Onald Gwiriri - NAMA WINNER, and African Renaissance by Charles Mutyasira.
In a country where a NAMA is the highest
literary honour, Essential Books has become a NAMA factory - not for Kaposa, but
for the writers he nurtured. That is the ALMA definition of a reading promoter.
This is why Kaposa stands out among 277 nominees.
While global giants write about children's vulnerability, Kaposa works inside it. In Norton, Harare's high-density suburbs, and rural schools where he donates books, his writing workshops have become an alternative to the streets.
His style - inspired by farm life, everyday moral lessons, lived Zimbabwean experience, the Christian values he learned from his maternal grandmother Gogo Masibanda - is deliberately simple. A child who has never finished a novel can finish a Kaposa story. And then write their own.
"Occupying them and making them learn as they read and write stories and their own and peers' experiences" - that is how his nominators described his work.
It is reading promotion as drug prevention. In a Zimbabwe battling youth drug and substance abuse, Kaposa does not preach. He gives a child a pen. A child who is writing The Magician is not smoking mutoriro in a back alley. A child who is editing Knowtown News is not lost.
This echoes exactly what the ALMA jury looks for: work of the highest quality that embraces the humanistic values Astrid Lindgren treasured - courage, imagination, respect for the child.
Kaposa is also the product and pillar of Writers International Network Zimbabwe (WIN), formed in 2010, itself a NAMA-winning association. WIN brought him back to writing after he had stopped. Today he is an editor of WIN's poetry magazine, run from a WhatsApp group - proof that you don't need a Stockholm office to build literature.
Zimbabwe Reacts: "Just Making the World Cup is an Achievement"
When news of the nomination broke, Zimbabwe's literary family responded with that peculiar mix of humour and reverence that only writers understand:
"Creative, commented, 'This great our publisher keep it. The world knows about you now. That visibility is enough. Open international doors had already begun. You shall see many flocking for your service. We trust God let keep the flame of the elephant ablaze.'"
Father Dr Isiah weighed in, 'Congratulations Sir Kaposa and all the Writers who continue to shape the narrative of Essential B PC, here and beyond.'
Elder Sheikh Al Dirani said, 'Uummm this is good Father, congratulations and we keep praying that the ultimate prize comes to Essential guru.'
Poet Pope Chirandu, who knows what world competition looks like, remarked best: 'Congrats, just making it to the World Cup is a loft achievement. All the best as you battle it out with the literal giants of the world.'
Veteran artist Tinashe Bob Muchuri put it simply: 'Just tell yourself you are an equal contestant.'
The winner will be announced on 6
April 2027 in Stockholm.
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