PATRONS:

Professor JOHN COETZEE

John Coetzee, born in South Africa, and now an Australian resident, is a writer, and academic. Coetzee won the Booker Prize in 1983 with Life & Times of Michael K and again in 1999 for Disgrace.  He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003.  He served as a judge in 2001.

WOLE SOYINKA

Wole Soyinka was born in Abeokuta, Nigeria, and received his doctorate from the University of Leeds. He was a dramaturgist at the Royal Court Theatre in London from 1958-1959 and in 1960 was awarded a Rockefeller bursary and returned to Nigeria to study African drama.  At the same time, he taught drama and literature at various universities in Ibadan, Lagos, and Ife, where, since 1975, he has been a professor of Comparative Literature. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986.

BOARD OF TRUTEES:

ELLAH P. WAKATAMA, OBE - chair OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Ellah Wakatama, OBE,  is the founding Publishing Director of The Indigo Press. She was a judge for the 2017 Dublin International Literary Award and the 2015 Man Booker Prize. She is a former deputy editor of Granta magazine and senior editor at Jonathan Cape, Random House. She is the editor of Africa39 and Safe House: Explorations in Creative Nonfiction. Her journalism has appeared in the Telegraph, Guardian, and Observer newspapers and Spectator and The Griffith Review. She is featured in the 2019 New Daughters of Africa anthology. She is a trustee of The Royal Literary Fund and sits on the Advisory board for Art for Amnesty and the Editorial Advisory Panel of the Johannesburg Review of Books. In 2016 she was Visiting Professor and Global and Intercultural Scholar at Goshen College, Indiana and Guest Master at the Gabriel Garcia Marquez Fellowship in Cartagena, Colombia.

Alicia Adams

Alicia B. Adams is the Vice President of International Programming and Dance at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. She has curated and produced the Center’s festivals celebrating the arts and culture of India, the Arab world, Japan and China. She also curates the Contemporary Dance and Etcetera series. Previously, she has worked for institutions including Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Belafonte Enterprises, City Center Theater, Harlem School of the Arts, and International Production Associates.

ALASTAIR NIVEN - TRUSTEE & CHAIR OF THE Advisory council

Alastair Niven LVO, OBE, was the Principal of Cumberland Lodge, Windsor, from 2001 to 2013. Before that, he worked at the British Council and Arts Council England as Director of Literature in both organizations. He has held posts at the Universities of Ghana, Leeds, Stirling, London (SOAS), and Aarhus, and is currently a Fellow of Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford. He has written books on D. H. Lawrence, Mulk Raj Anand, Raja Rao and other authors, as well as over a hundred articles and chapters. He has had many Commonwealth links since being a Commonwealth Scholar in his youth, including chairing the Commonwealth Writers Prize advisory committee for twenty years and editing The Journal of Commonwealth Literature for thirteen. He is currently a Trustee of the Council for Education in the Commonwealth. He was President of English PEN from 2003 to 2007 and is a former chairman of the UK Council for International Student Affairs. He is now Chairman of the Board of The Annual Register, an annually published record of world events founded by Edmund Burke in 1758. He was also made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and awarded the Benson Medal.

NII AYIKWEI PARKES - TRUSTEE & MEMBER OF THE ADVISORY COUNCIL

Nii Ayikwei Parkes is a Ghanaian-British publisher, producer, social commentator, and writer. He was the founding director of the Ama Ata Aidoo Centre for Creative Writing in Accra and is the Senior Editor at flipped eye publishing. Nii Ayikwei also serves on the editorial board of World Literature Today and has served as a judge for several literary prizes including the Commonwealth Prize, the NSK Neustadt Prize, and the Harvill Secker Young Translators’ Prize. He is a 2022/23 Hutchins Family Fellow with the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University.

GEETHA THARMARATNAM

Geetha Tharmaratnam is an investment executive with over nineteen years of experience in private equity, venture capital, development finance, impact investing and insurance in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe. She is the CEO of Aequalitas Capital and leads the Impact Investment practice. She advises investors, intermediaries, international development actors and companies interested in creating and implementing impact investment and Sustainable Development Goals related financing products. Geetha is an advisor to Capria Ventures, an accelerator for impact fund managers. She is on the Investment Committee of Aleyo Capital, a USD 50 Million Botswanan Investment Fund, and on the Board of Okavango Capital Partners, a fund addressing environmental sustainability and conservation. She is a trustee of the Royal African Society and an Eisenhower Fellow. Greetha’s favourite place in the world is under a clear Southern African night sky.

BUKOLA AKINYEMI

Bukola Akinyemi is a fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA). She is the Head of Group Finance at A2Dominion, one of London’s top housing associations. Bukola has extensive experience in working with charities and businesses to ensure compliance with charity and company reporting standards. Bukola was the Chair of the Parents’ Association at Dartford Grammar School for over five years, where she led fundraising initiatives, ensured broad-based representation and recruited a volunteer workforce to execute against the key objectives of the association.

SIMISO VELEMPINI

Simiso Velempini is an African investment advisor. She is the Founder and Managing Director of Vele Africa Advisory, a London-based, Africa-focused strategic advisory firm with clients operating across a range of sectors including extractives, financial services, energy, telecoms, infrastructure, healthcare and FMCG.  She has spent over 15 years advising clients on political developments, high-level stakeholder engagement, integrity risks as well as crisis and reputation management strategies across Africa. Simiso serves as Chairperson of Shasha Network, a pan-African career accelerator programme, and is an advisory board member of Operation Water.

MIMI KALINDA

Mimi Kalinda is the Group CEO and Co-Founder of the Africa Communications Media Group (ACG), a pan-African public relations and communications agency headquartered in Johannesburg, South Africa, with offices in Kigali, Rwanda; Harare, Zimbabwe; Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; and Abidjan, Côte D’Ivoire. One of the most satisfying accomplishments of Mimi’s career is the part she played in raising $51 million for the African Union Ebola campaign. Mimi is the Re-branding Africa Champion for Africa 2.0 and she was a finalist for the International African Woman of the Year Award at the Women4Africa Awards 2016. Mimi was featured in 2018 as a Forbes Afrique Top 40 Under 40 leader in the communications industry and a finalist of this year’s Standard Bank Top Women Awards (2019) in the Entrepreneur of the Year category. She is an Archbishop Tutu Leadership Program Fellow.

ADVISORY COUNCIL:

Ike Anya

Ike Anya is a Nigerian writer & public health doctor. He has worked as a consultant in public health medicine in London since 2008. Co-founder of the Abuja Literary Society & contributing editor to Farafina magazine, he co-edited the Weaverbird Collection of Nigerian Fiction (Farafina, 2008). People Don’t Get Depressed in Nigeria, an extract from a memoir in progress was published in Granta in 2012. Co-editor of Nigeria Health Watch (nigeriahealthwatch.com) & co-founder of the TEDxEuston event (tedxeuston.com), he is a TEDGlobal Africa Fellow (2007).

MARGARET BUSBY

Margaret Busby, OBE, Hon. FRSL, is a major cultural figure in Britain and around the world. She was born in Ghana and educated in the UK, graduating from London University’s Bedford College. She became Britain’s then youngest and first black African woman publisher when she co-founded Allison & Busby in the late 1960s, producing an international list of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. She was subsequently Editorial Director of Earthscan Publications, before pursuing a freelance career as writer, editor, critic and broadcaster. She compiled the pioneering Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Words and Writings by Women of African Descent (1992) and its 2019 follow-up New Daughters of Africa. She has judged prestigious literary prizes (including the Booker Prize, the British Book Awards, the Caine Prize for African Writing and the Commonwealth Book Prize) and served on the boards of such organizations as the Royal Literary Fund, Wasafiri magazine, the Africa Centre, the Nubian Jak Community Trust, and Tomorrow’s Warriors. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the recipient of several honorary doctorates as well as recognition that includes the Benson Medal, the Bocas Henry Swanzy Award, the Royal African Society’s inaugural Africa Writes Lifetime Achievement Award and the London Book Fair Lifetime Achievement Award.

JaMES cURREY

James Currey started his career working for the Oxford University Press. He later worked for Heinemann where he established their academic list on Africa and added 250 titles to the African Writers Series. Africa Writes Back (2008) is his account of the importance of the series in the establishment of African literature. In 1984 he and his wife Clare established James Currey Publishers which took a leading position in publishing African studies and still does as an imprint of Boydell and Brewer. 

TOM GAFFNEY

Tom Gaffney is a Chief Executive of Imara Holdings Limited, a sub-Saharan Africa-focused investment banking and asset management firm present in Botswana, Malawi, Mauritius, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. He is also a Managing Partner of Fleming Wulfsohn Africa and founded Ambrian, a specialist natural resource-focused investment bank that had a particular focus on financing projects throughout Africa. Before founding Ambrian, Tom was a Director of Robert Fleming & Co Ltd/ JP Morgan Chase. Tom is resident of the UK and is a dual US/ UK citizen.

DR. MPALIVE MSISKA

Mpalive Msiska, a Malawian academic, is a Reader in English and Humanities at Birkbeck College, University of London, with research and teaching interests in Critical and Cultural Theory as well as Postcolonial Literature, including African literature. He is the author of Post-colonial Identity in Wole Soyinka (2007), Wole Soyinka (1998) and co-author of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (2007) and The Quiet Chameleon: A Study of Modern Poetry from Central Africa (1992) and co-editor of Writing and Africa (1997). He served as a judge in 2006.

ZODWA NYONI

Zodwa Nyoni is a Zimbabwean-born playwright, poet, screenwriter, director, and dramaturg. She started writing poetry in 2005 with Leeds Young Authors. She won the Channel 4 Playwright’s Scheme with her play, BOI BOI IS DEAD (Leeds Playhouse & Tiata Fahodzi). It was a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize 2014/15. Her other theater credits include NINE LIVES (Leeds Playhouse Òran Mór), PHONE HOME (Upstart Theatre), BORDERLINE (Young Vic), ODE TO LEEDS (Leeds Playhouse), WEATHERED ESTATES (Hull City of Culture), DUTY (Paines Plough), OF HOME AND EACH OTHER (Splash and Ripple & UWE) THE HAPPINESS PROJECT (Pilot Theatre), and THE SURVIVORS GUIDE TO LIVING (Manchester Royal Exchange). Her most recent play, THE DARKEST PART OF THE NIGHT (Kiln Theatre) was shortlisted for the Alfred Fagon Award and George Devine Award 2021. Her radio credits include : LOVE AGAIN (BBC Radio 3), A KHOISAN WOMAN (Drama on 3), and CONVERSATIONS ON A BENCH: LEEDS (BBC Radio 4). Zodwa is currently developing television projects with Channel 4 and Netflix. She is an associate at Tiata Fahodzi, the UK’s leading British African heritage contemporary theater company. She has contributed writing to Public Art Encounters: Art, Space, and Identity (Routledge, 2018), Telling Our Stories of Home: International Performance Pieces By and About Women (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022), and Black British Queer Plays and Practitioners: An Anthology of Afriquia Theatre (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022).

NANA WILSON-TAGOE

Nana Wilson-Tagoe was born in Ghana and educated at the universities of Ghana, London, Sussex, and the West Indies. She has taught British, African, and African Diaspora Literature at universities in Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, the UK, and the US. She was a senior lecturer in African literature at SOAS (University of London) and Visiting Professor of Black Studies at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. She was chair of the Judging Panel for the Commonwealth Literature Prize (Africa Region) in 1993 and 1994, and Chair of the Macmillan Writer's Prize for Africa (Adult Fiction) in 2000. She served as a judge of the Caine Prize in 2003 and 2004 and chaired the panel of judges for the prize in 2006. She has published extensively on African and Caribbean literature and is currently co-editing the Encyclopedia of Black British Writing (1723-1914). She is the author of Historical Thought and Literary Representation in West Indian Literature and has a forthcoming book on the Ghanaian Writer Ama Ata Aidoo.

VICKY UNWIN

Vicky Unwin has had a long career, centered round her African roots, in both book and newspaper publishing. She was Managing Director of  the education publisher Heinemann International and Publisher of the African Writers Series with authors such as Chinua Achebe & Ngugi wa Thiong’o; Enterprise Director of the Telegraph Group; Managing Director of PR Newswire and, latterly, Media Director for The Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development.  She is currently a Trustee of Farm Africa, United World Schools, and Transform Drug Policy Foundation. She is also the author of two books, Love & War in the WRNS and The Boy from Boskovice: a father's secret life.