Africa

As Paramount’s Country Director for Nigeria, Bada Akintunde-Johnson wants to model a new mode of business and creative leadership. “You can’t exert the highest possible positive influence on people without connecting with them on a deep personal level,” he said in this extensive interview — our first in a series with industry leaders.

Before his manuscript won the 2022 Sillerman Prize, Tares Oburumu faced seemingly interminable hardship in his personal life. “The act of survival, for me, is a lot more inspirational than anything,” he said, “trying to put yourself in a place where there’s no place for you.”

Created by Didier Lacoste and Joy Fleury, with screenplay by Ukamaka Olisakwe, Adachioma Ezeano, and Jude Idada, it will focus on the two Franco-Dahomean Wars of 1890-94. The story, said Olisakwe, looks at “how this impacted lives and the Kingdom’s long rivalry with its neighbors.”

The first internship is for graphic design and the second is editorial.

These “conversations are as absurd as they are beautiful,” writes the poetry series’ managing editor Precious Okpechi. “This is what literature does: bare life’s absurdity and beauty.”

The project, in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and powered by Africa No Filter, is one of several to mark the continental group’s 20th anniversary.

The anthology, published by Jacana Media and edited by the chair of the award panel Otosirieze Obi-Young, includes work by Roy Udeh-Ubaka, Ukamaka Olisakwe, Moso Sematlane, Chisom Okafor, Halim Olaposi, Sheena Magenya, Kanyinsola Olorunnisola, and more.

The issue will be guest-edited by Tlotlo Tsamaase, Frazier Michael, and Lucky Grace. It opens for submissions on August 1.

The initiative, founded by the Nigerian novelist Suyi Davies Okungbowa, offers $500 to writers “to buy time, space, and resources” for their work.

“Having grown up in a small city in Nigeria where I had to cobble communities—both queer and literary—the value is in becoming a part of this incredible anthology that makes it possible for us all to exist,” said the Nigerian writer.

The Nigerian writer was chosen for his short story, “Until It Doesn’t,” which the judges called “brave fiction that tweaks the possibilities of the short story form.”

The 12 finalists, who get $200 each, were chosen by a judging panel chaired by Otosirieze Obi-Young and including Ellah Wakatama and Mark Gevisser.

Series Editor Jenny Minton Quigley on celebrating the short story form and the ripple effect of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s guest-editing role.

The judges praised his “allusive, lyrical poems [which] open a new itinerary in African poetry, drawing in Shona and Mandarin and mapping a journey of the Black body through India, Hong Kong, the Philippines and China.”

Three short story authors will be paired with experienced screenwriters to produce scripts.

Umezurike and Okonkwo won for poetry and fiction, respectively, and Nora Nneka won for nonfiction.