On International Mother Tongue Day, 21 February 2026, OlongoAfrica launched Volume 2 of its multilingual anthology project, Lingua, a growing archive of African fiction translated from English into African languages, accompanied by audio recordings voiced by African readers. Three years after the inaugural volume made its case, this second edition deepens it: ten previously published stories, rendered into ten languages, each with a recorded reading on YouTube, each available free at lingua.olongoafrica.com.

The project is edited by Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún and Salawu Olajide, and the argument behind it has not changed, only sharpened. As the editors write in their introduction to this volume, the African literary imagination has long been organised around a colonial hierarchy, production in English, French, Portuguese, while the continent’s more than 2,000 indigenous languages have waited at the margins. Lingua inverts this, moving stories in the opposite direction: from colonial languages into African ones. The goal is to build corpora in underserved languages, create an audience for African literature that does not first require fluency in a European tongue, and to begin generating the raw materials that translators will one day render back into English, or into each other.

Volume 2’s ten stories span the continent and its literary journals. Kawira Koome’s “3 Reasons Why I’ll Be a Cat in My Next Life,” first published here on Brittle Paper in 2023, travels into Somali as Bisado, translated by Abdihakin Ubahle and voiced by Farah Mohamed. Musu Bangura’s “The Grandparents,” also a Brittle Paper original, becomes Umakhulu noTatomkhulu in isiXhosa, translated by Vuyokazi Ngemntu and read by Sandiswa Mtati. Leila Aboulela’s “A Mention of My Father,” first published in Jalada Africa, crosses into Gikuyu as Kũririkana Baba, translated by Peter Mburu Kuria and read by Edwin Wanyoro. Victor Unwuchola’s “Footsteps” (Isele Magazine, 2023) becomes Amatacho in Ekegusii, translated and read by Jane Obuchi. Wangari Wamae’s “The Jini” (Omenana, 2021) is now Inunu in Ndebele, translated by Thompson Ndlovu and read by Christopher Mlalazi. Rachel Barduhn’s “Meeting Yewa” (Afritondo, 2023) becomes Ukuhlangana noYewa in Zulu, translated by Mamodiehi Gwala and read by Ayanda Xaba. Akorfa Dawson’s “Won’t You Eat Again?” (Tampered Press, 2021) is Na u ke ke Ua Ja Hape? in Sesotho, translated by Cece Celestina and read by Thothokiso Diaho. Ifeoluwa Adeniyi’s “Eclipse” (OlongoAfrica, 2024) is now የፀሀይ ግርዶሽ in Amharic, translated by Tesfaye Kirubel and read by Natahim Addis. Noel Cheruto’s “The Healer” (Kikwetu, 2017) becomes Dɔyɔla la in Ewe, translated by Fred Hayibor. And Emelda Gwitimah’s “Cousin Sister” (OlongoAfrica, 2025) travels into Arabic as الأخت ابنة الخالة, translated and read by Ibrahim Fawzy.

The introduction to this volume carries its own weight as a text. The editors reflect on what they have learned in the three years since Volume 1, including the insight that the problem runs deeper than translation itself. If original writing in African languages does not exist in the first place, then what is there to translate into English, and what does a future African-language literary tradition actually look like? The editors frankly admit that the work must attend to both ends of the ledger, translation from European languages into African ones and the encouragement of original composition in those languages. One of the editors, Túbọ̀sún, has since become the inaugural African editor of the American Best Literary Translations anthology, a vantage point that has only clarified the scale of the structural void they are trying to fill.

This volume was made possible by the estate of Aisha and Gbenga Oyebode Family Office and Dr. Kẹ́hìndé Ládiípọ̀. Volume 1 was supported by Sterling Bank Nigeria and Brick House. The introduction also pauses to mourn Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, quoted on the landing page as saying that African languages must talk to each other, who passed into ancestorhood in the middle of last year, and whose example the project honours by continuing. It quotes, too, the recently departed Bíọ́dún Jéyǐfó: that translation as literary field practice allows us to deal with the complexity and ambiguity of modern African literature.

Read and listen to Volume 2 at lingua.olongoafrica.com.