Sterling Bank, Aké Festival Put African Knowledge at Heart of AI Debate
By Gloria Ikibah
Sterling Bank has renewed its partnership with the Aké Arts and Book Festival as the 14th edition of the cultural gathering prepares to explore Africa’s place in an increasingly technology-driven world. 
The festival, scheduled to hold in Lagos from November 19 to 21, 2026, will focus on the theme, “Native Intelligence”, examining the relationship between traditional African knowledge and artificial intelligence systems shaping how people live, learn, work and communicate.
According to a statement from Sterling Bank, the partnership, which dates back to 2018, underscores the bank’s continued support for African creativity, intellectual development and cultural expression.
The theme seeks to highlight the depth of knowledge developed and passed down through generations in Africa, while raising questions about the representation of African languages, experiences and cultural contexts in emerging technologies.
It also examines the influence of artificial intelligence on storytelling, elections, journalism and the global understanding of truth.
Commenting on the festival, Chief Marketing Officer, Sterling Bank, Donatus Okpako, said African societies had always possessed their own forms of intelligence, which should play a role in shaping the technologies of the future.
“Every society has an intelligence, the instinct and judgement employed 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.
The festival’s “Native Intelligence” theme presents African knowledge as a living resource with relevance to the future, rather than a relic of the past.
Over the three days, novelists, poets, journalists, technologists, filmmakers and scholars are expected to examine who determines what counts as knowledge and whose perspectives shape emerging technologies.
Founder and Director of the Aké Arts and Book Festival, Lola Shoneyin, said the theme was intended to draw attention to the imbalance in how African knowledge and experiences are represented in artificial intelligence systems.
“A machine knows only what it has been fed, and it has not been fed much of us. 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 will feature book chats, panel discussions, film screenings, conversations, poetry performances and music.
Founded by Shoneyin in 2013, the Aké Arts and Book Festival has become one of Africa’s influential cultural gatherings, bringing together writers, poets, musicians, filmmakers, artists and thinkers from across the continent and its diaspora.
Organised by the Book Buzz Foundation, the festival has hosted more than 1,000 creative voices since its establishment.
Sterling Bank, a full-service commercial bank and member of Sterling Financial Holdings Group, said its partnership with the festival formed part of its broader commitment to supporting initiatives that promote innovation, creativity and the development of African ideas.
Registration for the festival is open through its official website, akefestival.org.
