Kendeka Prize for African Literature 2022 for African Writers

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Entries are invited from African writers for the Kendeka Prize for African Literature 2022. The deadline for the submission of entries is May 5, 2022.

Kendeka Prize for African Literature

This Prize will be awarded for the best piece of unpublished short story, either fiction or creative non-fiction. The prize aims at giving African writers, especially the unpublished a platform on which to show case their work. Through this platform more people will have access to their work which will in turn inspire more writing.

Through this Prize, Africans will have an opportunity of not only telling their own stories, but the freedom of telling them, as they are. This is because for a long time, the ‘African Story’ has been told by foreigners, a people who purport to know Africa. They have ended up with a story of Africa, a single story of a hungry, warring, ailing and backward people, a story of a continent full of calamities. This is their new version of the story of the Dark Continent!

This kind of African story is what Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie warns against and calls it ‘The Danger of a Single Story’. She goes on to tell us “That when we reject the single story, when we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise”. This is the paradise that Kendeka Prize for African Literature aims at regaining.

Kendeka Prize for African Literature Prizes

How to Apply for Kendeka Prize for African Literature

The entries will be read and analyzed. A long list shall be published in an anthology titled I Am Listening later in year. Judges and the date of the award ceremony will be announced in a later date.

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Olusegun Fapohunda