Premieres Monday, Aug. 24, 2026 at 11 p.m. on KPBS TV / Stream with KPBS+
POV presents "How to Build a Library," was Filmed over six years starting in 2017, the documentary chronicles two visionary Kenyan women as they transform Nairobi's historic McMillan Memorial Library—once reserved exclusively for white patrons during British colonial rule—into a vibrant cultural hub for the city it serves today.
As they navigate political resistance, fundraising challenges, and competing visions for the library's future, their journey reveals both the complexities and the possibilities of reimagining a public institution for a new generation. In the process, the documentary explores a post-colonial identity crisis through the eyes of Kenya’s millennial generation, raising universal questions about history, ownership, and belonging.
Praised by Sara Clements of Next Best Picture as a film that “shows how deeply a culture can be shaped by the stories it tells—and how powerful it is to rewrite them."
In 2017, novelist Shiro Koinange and publisher Angela Wachuka, left their careers to restore a dilapidated colonial-era library in the heart of downtown Nairobi. After successfully lobbying city officials to take over management of the neglected, state-owned building they found themselves with little experience, limited resources and a mammoth task ahead. Armed with an unwavering belief in the power of books, an instinct for rallying support through creativity, style and social media, they assemble a coalition of artists, architects, technologists and civic leaders to reimagine the space as a vibrant center for learning and culture. They called it Book Bunk.
While restoring the neo-classical building required years of fundraising, planning and construction, reclaiming its meaning proved an even greater challenge. Built in 1931 for the exclusive use of Nairobi's white population, the library remained a symbol of exclusion long after Kenya gained independence in the 1960s. As the Book Bunk team sift through decades of dust and clutter, they uncover thousands of forgotten books, paintings, and photographs; remnants of a past that feels both distant, yet eerily familiar. They confront a larger question: How can a place shaped by history become a space that belongs to everyone?
For Lekow and King, who have lived and worked together in Nairobi for more than 16 years, the McMillan Memorial Library became a lens through which to tell a larger story about Kenya, its past, and the people working to shape its future. While the library's colonial history provides important context, How to Build a Library is ultimately a film about possibility. Rather than dwelling on colonialism as the defining narrative, the documentary asks what comes after acknowledging the past, and how awareness can become action as communities reimagine the spaces and institutions that serve them.
Directors Maia Lekow & Christopher King, said: "How to Build a Library is a cinematic love letter to our city, Nairobi—to two remarkable women, the library’s staff and users, and the books on its shelves. It is also for anyone, anywhere, who has ever looked at something broken and imagined something better. We began making a story about two women fixing a building, but after 8 years it became a story about what it takes to hold your vision together when almost everything is designed to make you give up. We realised early on that Shiro and Wachuka's work offers a blueprint for communities all over the world tackling inequality, reclaiming their institutions and building a world they want, not simply accepting the one they’ve inherited."
Credits: directed and produced by Nairobi based filmmakers Maia Lekow and Christopher King, and executive produced by Oscar® Award winner Roger Ross Williams and Geoff Martz.
