The Afritondo Short Story Prize 2025 shortlist was announced on Friday, April 18, 2025.
Afritondo, a platform that aims to connect with and tell the stories of African and black minority populations worldwide, is the organisation behind the Afritondo Short Story Prize. Previous award winners, which celebrate the best short story writing by writers of African descent, have been Alex Kadiri, Howard Meh-Buh Maximus, Jarred Thompson, Desta Haile, and Sabah Carrim.
The 2025 jury is comprised of Rwandan-born Namibian author, editor, publisher, photographer, literary educator, and entrepreneur Rémy Ngamije, Ghanaian poet, storyteller, and community catalyst Ama Asantewa Diaka, and Nigerian-born filmmaker and novelist Umar Turaki. Together with the prize readers, they analysed over 500 entries from 34 countries and announced the longlist on Friday, March 28. The shortlist was announced on Friday, April 18.
The jury said, “The stories on this year’s shortlist display an exceptional mastery of language and craft—there is no doubt that African storytelling is a fully-fledged discipline with nuance and style. The writers whose short stories have been curated here display not only the present and healthy state of creative writing from Africa and its diaspora but also hint at its future as the gateway to exploring world-shaping things like migration and movement, family and belonging, the mystic and the unknown, and the possibilities of connection and redemption.”
The shortlisted stories are;
- The Twenty-Eighth Day, Efua Boadu (United Kingdom / Ghana)
- Bible Blues, Emelda Nyaradzai Gwitimah (Zimbabwe / Canada)
- Mrs Coker and the Headless Masquerade, Mustapha Enesi (Nigeria)
- Heat, Gift Nyoni (Zimbabwe / United Kingdom)
- To my right, the ocean, to my left, the hills, Zoe Ngombane (South Africa)
The winner will be announced on Friday, May 9.
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