African Folk Tales
Animal tricksters, origin stories, kings and talking creatures appear in these selections from African storytelling traditions. The source collections represent particular places and tellers; they do not stand for the whole continent.
Older published versions can also carry a collector’s assumptions. The story notes identify the available source and distinguish its wording or interpretation from the events of the tale.
56 stories are in this collection right now.
Browse by region: Africa.
African Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
How the Tortoise Got Its Shell
Tall, fast Klo the tortoise wins a fight for palm wine, drinks too much, and gets shut outside the god Mauri’s feast in a two-month rain.
African Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
How Mushrooms First Grew
A debt is passed from two brothers to a bushfowl, a tree, an elephant, a hunter and a stump, until the clever ants find a way to pay it off.
African Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
How Beasts and Serpents First Came into the World
Polite Kweku Tsin follows lost palm-kernels into a silent town and wins a food-giving drum, but rude Anansi brings home a drum that calls wild beasts.
African Folk Tales
All Ages
Farmer Mybrow and the Fairies
Forest fairies help Farmer Mybrow clear, burn and plant a secret field, but his wife answers their question at the green crop and the fairies ruin it.
African Folk Tales
Ages 6-8
Honourable Minū
A poor Akim-man in Accra hears “Minū” after every question and decides one Mr Minū owns all the town’s riches, until he meets a funeral procession.
African Folk Tales
Anansi and Nothing
Anansi borrows rich Nothing’s velvet cloth to win wives, loses them to Nothing’s kind bride, and turns to a deadly trap in jealous revenge.
African Folk Tales
Anansi the Blind Fisherman
Old, blind Anansi goes fishing with two kind helpers but answers every bit of help with insults, until the helpers decide to let his pride guide him.
African Folk Tales
Ages 6-8
Adzanumee and Her Mother
A childless woman’s wish turns a perfect yam into a daughter, on one condition she must keep, but a single impatient remark undoes the miracle.