2021 Judges

Judges are drawn from different literary fields including eminent journalists, broadcasters and academics with expertise and a connection to literature in Africa. Five stories are selected for the shortlist by the judges, with one selected as the winner on the day of the award each year.

Goretti Kyomuhendo is one of Uganda’s leading novelists. She holds an MA in creative writing from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Her first novel, The First Daughter, was published in 1996, followed by Secrets No More in 1999, which won the Uganda National Literary Award for Best Novel in the same year. In 2002, she published a novella, Whispers from Vera. Her third novel, Waiting, was published by The Feminist Press in New York in 2007. In 2014, she published the Essential Handbook for African Creative Writers. She has also published several children’s books and short stories, the latest being Lost and Found published in New Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Writing by Women of African Descent edited by Margaret Busby (2019).  The first Ugandan woman writer to receive the International Writing Program Fellowship at the University of Iowa, Goretti has been recognised for her work as a writer and literary activist nationally and internationally, and has participated in numerous forums worldwide. In 2019, Goretti was featured among the 100 Most Influential Africans by the UK- based, bestselling Pan African Magazine, New African. In 2020, she was appointed a member of the Commonwealth Foundation’s Civil Society Advisory Governors representing Africa. Goretti is a founding member of FEMRITE – Uganda Women Writers’ Association and Publishing House – and worked as its first Director for ten years (1997-2007).  In 2009, she founded and is Director of the African Writers Trust, which promotes synergies and collaborative learning between African writers on the continent and in the Diaspora.  

Nick Makoha is the founder of The Obsidian Foundation. In 2017, Nick’s debut collection, Kingdom of Gravity, was shortlisted for the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection and was one of the Guardian’s best books of the year. Nick is a Cave Canem Graduate Fellow and the Complete Works alumnus. He won the 2015 Brunel International AfricanPoetry Prize and the 2016 Toi Derricotte & Cornelius Eady Prize for his pamphlet Resurrection Man. His poems have appeared in the Cambridge Review, the New York Times, Poetry Review, 'e Rialto, Poetry London, TriQuarterly Review, Boston Review, Callaloo and Wasa#ri. He is a Trustee for the Arvon Foundation and the Ministry of Stories, and a member of the Malika’s Poetry Kitchen collective. nickmakoha.com

Razia Iqbal is a BBC News Presenter on Newshour on the World Service, and the World Tonight on Radio 4, and was the BBC arts correspondent for ten years. She will be a Visiting Journalism Professor at Princeton in 2022. She was born in Uganda and lived in Nairobi until she was 8-years-old, when she moved to London.

Victor Ehikhamenor is a Nigerian multimedia artist, photographer and writer. He has been prolific in producing abstract, symbolic and politically/historically motivated works. A 2020 National Artist in Residence at the Neon Museum, Las Vegas, Nevada, Ehikhamenor is also a 2016 Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Fellow. He has held several solo exhibitions and his works have been included in numerous group exhibitions and biennales, including: The 57th Venice Biennale as part of the Nigerian Pavilion (2017), 5th Mediations Biennale in Poznan, Poland (2016), The 12th Dak’art Biennale in Dakar, Senegal (2016), Biennale Jogja XIII, Indonesia (2015). As a writer he has published fiction and critical essays with academic journals, magazines and newspapers round the world including New York Times, Guernica Magazine, BBC, CNN Online, Washington Post, etc. Ehikhamenor is the founder of Angels and Muse, a thought laboratory dedicated to the promotion and development of contemporary African art and literature in Lagos, Nigeria.

Georgina Godwin is an independent broadcast journalist. A regular chair of literary events, worldwide, she is also Books Editor for Monocle 24 and presenter of the in-depth author interview show “Meet the Writers”. She is a frequent host of the award winning current affairs programme The Globalist and a commentator on Southern African politics.  Born in Zimbabwe, and educated there and at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts, London, she was a founder member of SWRadio Africa, Zimbabwe’s first independent radio station (for which she was deemed “an enemy of the state” and banned from her home country), and of the Harare International Festival of the Arts. She serves on the board of the charities English PEN & Developing Artists.