November Book of the Month

Each year, Book Aid International sends thousands of new books to Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya through our partner Windle Trust.

The camp is one of the world’s largest, home to over 100,000 refugees from DRC Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan, Sudan, Somalia and Uganda among others.

This year, we’ve been shining a light on how Kakuma has been responding to the Covid-19 pandemic and that’s why Bram J. Jansen’s book is our November Book of the Month.

Though notionally still a ‘temporary’ camp, Kakuma has become a permanent urban space in all but name with businesses, schools, a hospital and its own court system. Such places, Bram J. Jansen argues, should be recognised as ‘accidental cities’, a unique form of urbanization that has so far been overlooked by scholars.

 

The book explores how we might develop more effective strategies for managing refugee camps in the global south and beyond.

This book is being sent to Kenya in our next shipment, and we would like to thank Zed Books for their donation.