Mona Eltahawy, author of The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls, and Otosirieze Obi-Young, editor-in-chief of Open Country Mag and of Folio Nigeria, will join a panel to speak on “Collective Threads: Digital Connectivity, Creative Power & Global Black Activism.”
The session is part of Africa Soft Power Series 2021—a month-long celebration of Africa and a festival of ideas. To run from 5-25 May, this year’s event is themed “The Bridge: The Past, The Present, The Future.” Intellectuals, influencers, leaders are brought together to engage “in a longer and broader conversation on Africa’s creative power, knowledge economy, and how these assets can strengthen ties between the continent, diaspora community, and the wider world.”
“Collective Threads: Digital Connectivity, Creative Power & Global Black Activism” is scheduled for Friday, 7 May, 05:00 PM WAT. It will be held on Zoom.
Mona Eltahawy is an award-winning New York-based journalist, author, commentator, and international lecturer on Arab and Muslim issues, with pieces in, among other places, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Christian Science Monitor. A noted feminist and former reporter for The Guardian, U.S. News, and World Report, she has been described as “The Woman Explaining Egypt to the West.”
Writer, editor, journalist, curator, and media consultant, Otosirieze Obi-Young edits Open Country Mag and Folio Nigeria, CNN’s exclusive media affiliation in Africa, where he profiles innovators and facilitators in culture. In 2019, he was awarded the inaugural The Future Awards Africa Prize for Literature for the extensive work he has done in African literature. Currently, he is chair of the judging panel for The Gerald Kraak Prize, a South African initiative devoted to storytelling about gender, sexuality, and social justice.
Eltahawy and Obi-Young are joined on the panel by Sena Voncujovi, co-founder of Jaspora, a platform focused on mobilizing and supporting changemakers in the African diaspora in Japan; and Zoe Ramushu, a filmmaker and multimedia journalist who will be moderating the session.
