Mulenga Kapwepwe

Chair, National Arts Council of Zambia
Sociologist, author, and playwright

Mulenga Kapwepwe has served as the Patron of many associations, including the Women in Visual Arts Association, the Zambian Folk Music and Dance Association, and the Youth for Culture Association. She has also been the Vice Chairman of the Ukusefya pa Ngwena Cultural Association, Zambia Visual Arts Council, and The Zambia Women Writers Association, as well as having been on both the Zambian Commission for UNESCO and the Arts Institute of Africa. She is also the chairperson of the Arterial Network. Mulenga’s interest in Lubuto’s work actually predated the existence of our organization; in fact, she gave us the name “Lubuto,” recognizing that libraries would be a means of bringing enlightenment, knowledge and light into the lives of Zambia’s children, and to reconnect vulnerable children with their culture and traditions. She thus guided Lubuto’s efforts to bring back the “…great literature for children, in our own languages, that had disappeared.”  She told an audience assembled at the Zambian Embassy in the U.S. that she has “…been totally inspired by what librarians can do…. I don’t even think you know what you have done for Zambia, because we will have that literature back and can read it to the children.  It’s excellent; it’s very well-written literature…. One of the big visions for us, at Lubuto, is to get those stories back; they’re beautiful stories…they can be sung, they can be written, there are many ways they can be shared.  [At Lubuto] we’re really very much about quality…because we think every child deserves the best.”

Women’s History Museum of Zambia “Leading Ladies” videos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClqsHIH27kBzuBEssoWt9qg/videos

Mulenga’s Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulenga_Kapwepwe