Rainbow Book Club

The Rainbow Book Club (RBC) is an NGO that was founded in 2005 to promote reading for personal and social development in Africa. Our work culminated in Port Harcourt being nominated UNESCO World Book Capital 2014. Obi Ezekwesili chairs the board of trustees. Koko Kalango founded the RBC. RBC, an official UNESCO club, is part of the Rainbow Foundation. RBC kicked off the ‘Get Nigeria Reading again!’ Campaign in 2005 and since then has enlisted the participation of high profile authors, captains of industries, government officials and celebrities to create awareness of the correlation between reading and building a successful nation. We have run over 200 book clubs in primary and secondary schools, set up 13 libraries, organised trainings for over 500 book club facilitators, organised over 42 reading and writing exercises to groom upcoming writers and published some of them. We have also promoted established writers. From 2008, RBC has run the annual Garden City Literary Festival (now the Port Harcourt Book Festival). We also managed the year-long Port Harcourt World Book Capital programme. Amongst the projects in that period was ‘Africa 39’, which selected and celebrated 39 African writers under the age of 40. Our partners over the years have included the Rotary Club, the British Council, Alliance Francaise, SHELL, TOTAL, MTN, BRITISH AIRWAYS, LUFTHANSA, THE NIGERIAN BOTTLING COMPANY, GTB and ACCESS Bank. Our publications include Nigerian Literature – A Coat of Many Colours,(an anthology of 50 Nigerian writers with foreword by President Goodluck Jonathan), African Literature – A Coat of Many Colours,(an anthology of 50 African writers with forward by Chief Emeka Anyaoku), 100 years around Nigeria (a compilation of stories on Nigeria’s culture by children) and Songhai 12 (an anthology of writing by upcoming writers). Honorary members of the RBC include Prof. Wole Soyinka and Rev. Jesse Jackson. For more information, visit