Sterling Bank Backs Aké Festival to Challenge Africa's Role in Global AI Future

As artificial intelligence reshapes how the world lives, works and tells its stories, Sterling Bank has renewed its partnership with the Aké Arts and Book Festival to ask a critical question: whose intelligence is powering the future?

The festival, one of Africa’s foremost gatherings of writers, artists and thinkers, returns to Lagos from November 19 to 21, 2026, for its 14th edition themed ‘Native Intelligence’ – an exploration of the intersection between Africa’s generational knowledge systems and the AI systems now influencing how people live, learn, work and communicate.

The theme is rooted in a simple truth: Africa was thinking long before machines were. The wisdom of elders, proverbs and folktales represents refined systems of knowledge built over centuries. Today, as AI changes how stories are told, elections are contested and truth is reported, questions persist about how well African languages, lived experiences and cultural contexts are represented in the technologies shaping the world.

For Sterling Bank, which has supported Aké since 2018, the partnership is a sustained investment in the people and ideas shaping Africa’s cultural and intellectual future. Over the years, the festival has convened over 1,000 creative voices, creating a platform for African stories and perspectives to reach global audiences.

Donatus Okpako, Chief Marketing Officer, Sterling Bank, said: “Every society has an intelligence – the instinct and judgement 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 are shaping 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.”

According to the organisers, ‘Native Intelligence’ does not treat African knowledge as a relic behind glass. It treats it as a living intelligence with a claim on the future. Over three days, novelists, poets, journalists, technologists, filmmakers and scholars will examine who decides what counts as knowledge and whose voice the future speaks in.

Lola Shoneyin, Founder and Director of Aké Arts and Book Festival, said: “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.”

The festival programme will feature book chats, panel discussions, film screenings, poetry, music and performances. Registration is open at http://akefestival.org.

It would be recalled that Sterling Bank Limited is a full-service national commercial bank in Nigeria and a member of Sterling Financial Holdings Group. With over 60 years heritage, the bank has evolved from Nigeria’s pre-eminent investment banking institution to a trusted provider of retail, commercial, and corporate banking services.

Guided by its HEART strategy focused on Health, Education, Agriculture, Renewable Energy and Transportation, Sterling is a leader in digital banking, financial inclusion and purpose-driven leadership.

Similarly Aké Arts and Book Festival was
Founded by Lola Shoneyin in 2013 and organised by Book Buzz Foundation, the Aké Arts and Book Festival is one of Africa’s most influential cultural gatherings.

It brings together writers, poets, musicians
filmmakers, artists and thinkers from across Africa and the diaspora.