The Hausa International Book and Arts Festival (HIBAF) will be curated by Open Arts as a crisscross festival of arts and language. It is the aim of this festival to open up discussions about Hausa as a language through literature, history, music and arts to be displayed to a new and exciting young audience.

The festival aims to showcase the best of contemporary African literature, poetry, music, art, film, and theatre in Hausa to a target audience of thousands of youths across West Africa. This is an important period in West Africa at crossroads of extremism to consider arts in Hausa as focal points to address our problems. We hope to combine the tools of arts and literature through new digital collaborations and conversations to seek fresh perspectives about the role and meaning of culture in a time of crisis.