Introducing the Etisalat Africa prize for literature

Alrighty folks. Here is another prize for you to try and get your mitts on if you fancy yourself a writer of no mean repute. Wednesday saw the introduction of the Etisalat Prize for African literature in Lagos Nigeria. Yes, the Nigeria that beat our Harambee Stars at the football yesterday.

This new prize from one Etisalat is for full-length English fiction novels and flash fiction short stories, to be launched toward the end of the year and driven entirely via social media. I am not sure what “flash fiction short stories” is but wikipedia tells me that Flash Fiction is a style of fictional literature or fiction of extreme brevity. The new prize is aimed at recognizing and celebrating writers and other members of the literary community across Africa. Can I get an “Oh Yeah!”

The new prize has some serious literature folks looking through it including the chair Pumla Gqola who is an associate professor in the Department of African Literature at the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa) and one of South Africa’s most celebrated intellectuals. Also in there are Kenya’s own Kwani Trust Managing Editor (and Caine Prize almost winner) Billy Kahora, Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Ohio and winner of the Commonwealth Prize Zakes Mda and writer and academic Sarah Ladipo Manyika.

No word on how much winners will get but its early days yet. And Etisalat is a major firm so it’s probably more than the Jomo Kenyatta Literature Prize hand out. We all know that’s not a lot. I’ll keep you posted.
P.S. This post has forced me to learn how to say the name of the sponsor. At the very least ETISALAT has achieved that…