Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Zukiswa Wanner, Richard Ali Mutu, and Hawa Jande Golakai are the facilitators of the CANEX Book Factory Creative Writing Workshop in Accra, Ghana in August 2024.
Creative Africa Nexus (CANEX) is a program of the Africa Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) supporting the development of Africa’s creative and cultural industries, addressing some of the challenges faced by that economy, through the provision of access to finance, capacity building, trade, investment and export promotion, access to new market opportunities, digital solutions and policy advocacy in order to fast-track the scaling of Africa’s creative sectors within the global economy.
One of its projects, the CANEX Book Factory, is dedicated to highlighting the book value chain with a yearlong series of interventions that includes: The CANEX Prize for Publishing in Africa; A pan-African creative writing workshop; A bi-monthly resource email newsletter, curating legal, accounting and creative writing resources for writers, editors, agents, publishers and booksellers for African writers and book industry players.
The pan-African creative writing workshop, dedicated to the art of prose, is done in collaboration with the James and Grace Adichie Foundation and Narrative Landscape Press Limited. The facilitators for this workshop in Accra, Ghana are;
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
Born in Enugu, Nigeria, Chimamanda has made waves across the globe with her profound storytelling and impactful ideas. With a summa cum laude degree in Communication and Political Science from Eastern Connecticut State University, and advanced degrees from Yale and Johns Hopkins, her academic journey is as impressive as her literary achievements. She has received numerous accolades, including the MacArthur Fellowship and multiple honorary doctorates from prestigious institutions. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novels, including the award-winning Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun, and Americanah, have been translated into over thirty languages, touching hearts and minds worldwide. Her TED talks, particularly The Danger of A Single Story and We Should All Be Feminists, have sparked essential conversations about identity and feminism.
Zukiswa Wanner
Zukiswa Wanner, a South African journalist, novelist, and editor born in Zambia and now based in Kenya, has made significant contributions to African literature. Since 2006, when she published her first book, her novels have been shortlisted for prestigious awards, including the South African Literary Awards (SALA) and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. In 2015, she won the K Sello Duiker Memorial Literary Award for her novel London Cape Town Joburg. Wanner was also named on the Africa39 list, recognizing 39 Sub-Saharan African writers under 40 with the potential to shape trends in African literature. In 2020, she became the first African woman to win the Goethe Medal, an honour she later returned in protest against the German government’s role in the ongoing war in Gaza.
Richard Ali Mutu
Richard Ali A Mutu Kahambo is a Congolese Lawyer and writer living in Kinshasa (DRC). Winner of the 2009 Mark Twain Prize for his short story, Le Cauchemardesque de Tabu translated The Nightmare of Tabu. In 2014. He was selected among the 39 young authors from sub-Saharan Africa under the age of 40 and considered the most promising in Africa for the anthology Africa39 prefaced by Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka. Founder of the Association of Young Writers of Congo (AJECO – in 2011), co-founder and interim president of the association “Les Écrivains du Congo asbl”. He is currently Vice-President of the Union of Writers of Congo (UECO), and Head of the Wallonia-Brussels Library in Kinshasa. He is the author of a successful novel written entirely in Lingala, “Ebamba. Kinshasa-Makambo” and translated into French and English under the title “Mr Fix-it” by Phoneme Media publishing house based in Los Angeles amongst many others. He initiated the creation of two major literary prizes for Africa and DRC: “the Pan-African Grand Prize for Literature” and “the Congolese Grand Prize for Books”. In October 2022, he was made “Literary Ambassador for the DRC and Africa” by the Bookutani Association.
Hawa Jande Golakai
Hawa Jande Golakai (aka H. J. Golakai, Ziawa Jande) was born in Germany and spent her lively childhood in Liberia until the 1990 civil war. A refugee and cultural nomad, she has lived and worked in several African countries. Jande, a clinical immunologist by training, also works as an author, educator, and consultant. She writes crime, folklore and speculative fiction. She is a laureate of the Africa39 list of most promising sub-Saharan writers and is listed in New African magazine’s 100 Most Influential Africans of 2016. She won the 2017 Brittle Paper Award for nonfiction and was longlisted for the 2019 NOMMO Award for speculative fiction. She has been shortlisted three times for crime fiction writing. Golakai is a 2020-21 Miles Morland Scholarship winner for Spectral, her upcoming jujuism fantasy book. She is also working on a collection of Liberian mystical folktales. Her works have featured in Granta, BBC, Brittle Paper, Omenana, Isele Magazine, Lolwe, Gutter Press and other publications. Currently, she lives in Monrovia with her son.
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