2020 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. 

Kenneth Olumuyiwa Tharp CBE is a key figure in the UK arts and culture scene with over 35 years professional experience in the sector. He began his career as a dancer; as one of the leading dance artists of his generation, he performed for 13 years with the internationally-acclaimed London Contemporary Dance Theatre and then with other leading companies during a 25-year career as a performer, choreographer, teacher and director. From 2007 to 2016, he was Chief Executive of The Place, the UK’s leading centre for contemporary dance development. He took up post as Director of The Africa Centre at the end of May 2018, in its new home in Southwark, London. He is a devoted champion of the arts, cultural learning, creativity and diversity, and frequently presents as a keynote speaker in a variety of contexts, from schools to leadership courses, industry related events and the corporate sector. He is a regular contributor to Speakers for Schools. He has served on various arts Boards, including The Royal Opera House and The Royal Opera House Benevolent Fund. He is currently a Patron of Akademi and The Place; a Trustee of Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures, and the Chineke! Foundation and Orchestra; he is also a School Governor. He has appeared in eight successive editions of the annual Powerlist of Britain’s most influential people of African and African Caribbean heritage, as well as in Who’s Who. In 2003 Kenneth was made an OBE in recognition of his services to dance, and in June 2017 was made a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list, also in recognition of his services to dance.

Audrey Brown is a South African broadcast journalist, and one of the leading voices for the BBC World Service, presenting the flagship daily news and current affairs programme, Focus on Africa. She cut her journalistic teeth on progressive newspapers like Vrye Weekblad and the then Weekly Mail - now Mail and Guardian - in the late '80s and early '90s in South Africa. Audrey studied Film Criticism and Documentary Film Making at Varan Institute in Paris, and holds a BA Journalism degree from Rhodes University. She also studied for a Masters degree at the University of Wales, College at Cardiff. Before joining the BBC in London, Audrey was one of the founding curators for the groundbreaking Women's Gaol at Constitution Hill in South Africa. Audrey lives in London and travels the world, making radio documentaries and reporting on the lives of people in Africa and the diaspora. She is usually found on air, on her way somewhere, or lost in a book.

Gabriel Gbadamosi is an Irish-Nigerian poet and playwright. His London novel Vauxhall (2013) won the Tibor Jones Pageturner Prize and Best International Novel at the Sharjah Book Fair. He was AHRC Creative Fellow in British, European and African performance at the Pinter Centre, Goldsmiths, a Judith E. Wilson Fellow for creative writing at Cambridge University and Royal Literary Fund Fellow at City & Guilds of London Art School where he is now a Trustee. Plays include Abolition (Bristol Old Vic), Eshu’s Faust (Jesus College, Cambridge), Hotel Orpheu (Schaubühne, Berlin), Shango (DNA, Amsterdam), Stop and Search (Arcola Theatre) and for radio The Long, Hot Summer of ’76 (BBC Radio 3) which won the first Richard Imison Award. He presented the flagship arts and ideas programme Night Waves for BBC Radio 3, was a director of The Society of Authors and of Wasafiri Magazine for International Contemporary Writing and is a Trustee of the Arcola Theatre, London.

Ebissé Wakjira-Rouw is an Ethiopian-born non-fiction editor, podcaster, publisher and policy advisor at the Dutch Council for Culture in the Netherlands. She co-founded Dipsaus, a podcast, online magazine, talent development platform and a publishing imprint with Uitgeverij Pluim. She has worked as a non-fiction editor at Uitgeverij AUP and co-edited the ground-breaking anthology, “BLACK: Afro-European Literature in the Low Countries” (Dutch, 2017), first of its kind available in the Dutch language. She is also a member of the curatorial team of the International Winternachten Literary Festival in The Hague. www.dipsaus.org

James Murua is a Kenya based blogger, journalist, podcaster, and editor who has written for a variety of media outlets in a career spanning print, web and TV. His online space www.jamesmurua.com , which focuses on literary news and reviews was created in 2013 and is the number one blog on African literature today. This blog was nominated for "Best Creative Writing Blog" for the 2018 Bloggers Association of Kenya Awards. He was also announced as Best Writer “Theatre, Art and Culture” at Kenya’s Sanaa Theatre Awards and listed as one of the top men in digital in Kenya in 2018. His Podcast “The African Literary Podcast” was nominated for Podcast of the Year at the Bloggers Association of Kenya Awards 2019. James Murua has conducted workshops on blogging and social media in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Malawi and has been a media consultant for the Goethe Institut, Nairobi. He was editor for The Star newspaper in Kenya for five years and a columnist for nine where he was voted “Columnist of the Year” in 2009. He has also contributed to Quartz Africa, Management Magazine (Kenya), The Daily Nation (Kenya), The Nairobian (Kenya), DigifyAfrica.com (South Africa), Johannesburg Review of Books (South Africa), and Africa Independent (South Africa).