Botlhale is a South African YouTube channel creating teaching tools for African literature.

Modeled after literary youtube accounts like Nerdwriter and Lessons From The Screenplay, Botlhale offers video essays analyzing various texts and elements of African literature.

For example, oral literature is used to explore the first poem in Koleka Putuma’s Collective Amnesia. In another video, Taiye Selasi’s novel Ghana Must Go is reimagined through the lens of epic poetry in order to make Selasi’s work more accessible to readers.

The latest video, posted below, is on Zakes Mda’s The Zulus of New York and looks at the role of historical fiction in humanizing marginalized communities.

Some of these videos are available in African languages.

The project is run by Itumeleng Molefi, a highschool science teacher and freelance writer and a production team, which includes producer and video editor Mbali Mashaba, consulting script editor Koki Kapa, and illustrator Tyanai Chigovera.

See more videos here and check them out on twitter @botlhalegh.