2022 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.

Okey Ndibe, Chair of Judges, is the author of two novels, Foreign Gods, Inc. and Arrows of Rain; a memoir, Never Look an American in the Eye (winner of the 2017 Connecticut Book Award for nonfiction); and The Man Lives: A Conversation with Wole Soyinka on Life, Literature and Politics He earned MFA and PhD degrees from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and has taught at various universities and colleges, including Brown, St. Lawrence, Trinity College, Connecticut College, and the University of Lagos (as a Fulbright scholar). His award-winning journalism has appeared in major newspapers and magazines in the UK, Italy, South Africa, Nigeria, and the US—where he served on the editorial board of the Hartford Courant. He writes a column on the substack platform titled “Offside Musings,” and co-hosts a podcast of the same name.

Elisa Diallo is a literary scholar and an author based in Frankfurt, Germany. Born in Paris to a French mother and a Guinean father, she works in publishing as Foreign Rights director. She has been on judging panels for several literary prizes, including the newly founded Resonanzen Literary Festival for Black German Writings. She is the author of two books: Tierno Monenembo, une écriture migrante (Karthala, 2012) and Fille de France (Flammarion, 2019; Berenberg, 2021).

Letlhogonolo Mokgoroane is the co-founder and co-host of The Cheeky Natives - a literary platform that focuses on archiving and curatorship of Black artistic expressions. The Cheeky Natives was awarded social media influencer of the year by Brittle Paper in 2021. Letlhogonolo is an advocate and a member of the Johannesburg Society of Bar. They hold a Bachelor of Law from Stellenbosch University and a Masters of Law (summa cum laude) from the University of California, Los Angeles. They have guest lectured at Stellenbosch University, the University of the Witwatersrand, and the University of Pretoria. In 2018, they were named one of the Top 200 Young South Africans.

Àsìkò Okelarin is a London based Nigerian visual artist who communicates his thoughts through the mediums of photography, film and mixed media. His work is constructed in the narrative that straddles between fantasy and reality as a response to his experiences of identity, culture and heritage. Initiated by internal dialogue, his work sparks conversations about the African identity, cultural symbolism and depictions of Yoruba ideology. With an intrinsically sensual approach, where the body becomes the subject, his work generates new ideas around identity, power dynamics and violence. Okelarin has exhibited at Rele Gallery in Nigeria, the Gallery of African Art in London, and been featured in The Times, The Guardian, and The Telegraph. He has worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company and has two current exhibitions, ‘Of Myth and Legend’ and ‘The Woman in the Photograph’, currently showing on Sloane Street and St James Pavilion, London.

Angela Wachuka is a Founder & Managing Trustee at Book Bunk, a firm driving the restoration of some of Nairobi's most iconic public libraries. Book Bunk's flagship project is Nairobi's oldest public library; The McMillan Memorial Library, and two of its branches in Eastlands (Kaloleni Library and Eastlands Library). Wachuka is the former executive director of Kwani Trust, a founding member of the Creative Economy Working Group, and served as Secretary to a National Film Committee appointed by Kenya's Ministry of Sports, Culture and the Arts to align proposed film legislation. She was an International Arts Management Fellow at the Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, and from 2019 to 2020, she was an Africa Leader at the Obama Foundation.