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By Munyal Markus Manunyi
All roads and air routes lead to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, as the department of literature, University of Dar es salaam buries itself in serious preparatory arrangements in anticipation of African writers across the globe, while writers look forward to an exciting, fun catching ‘Writers mingle’.
The 2021 annual African Writers Conference promises to be educative, interactive, and rewarding.
It will be the fourth conference in series; with the first held in 2018 at the Abuja International Conference Centre, captioned: Abuja African writers light up Abuja.
The thematic focus was on: ‘Re-imagining African Literature: New Voices, New Narrative in the Fight for the Girl Child’.
The second conference took place on 28th September, 2019, with the theme: ‘Cultural Stereotypes in African Literature: Rewriting the Narrative for the 21st Century Reader’.
The keynote speaker was Sabah Carrim from Mauritius. Other writers in attendance were; Anthony Onugba – founder of Writers Space Africa, Lawrence Njagi and Gabriel Dinda, and over three hundred other writers from thirteen countries.
On 5th -7th September, the third conference took place in Lusaka, Zambia’s capital city, with only about fifty writers in attendance out of about four hundred who registered to attend.
This distortion in attendance came up as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions placed on countries all over the world. Although so many writers took advantage of the virtual linking to hook up on zoom in order to benefit from the rich content of the theme: The African identity.
Speaking on what African identity is, the following were discussed:
Our physical characteristics: kinky hair, melanin, from the darkest blue to the palest white.
Stereotypes imposed on us which eventually became part of African identity, such as the images of starving babies with flies across their mouths, corruption, HIV/AIDS, and so on.
The love for our continent (Africa), being engrossed in her problems and solutions.
Self-love: understanding your origin, your perception about yourself and how others view you.
How you portray yourself to the world, who you are, and how the world sees you from what you portray.
This year’s conference as has theme – “The Future of African Literature.” The conference is in partnership with the department of literature, University of Dar es Salaam, sponsored by many organisations like Fintengo Schools, Writers Space Africa, Feza schools among others. It is also supported by other international writing organisations like International African writers’ association – IAWA, Africa in Dialogue, Brittle Paper, Writers Guild, African tales, and so on. So many writers look forward to emerging winners in the various writers’ categories of the African Writers Awards this year and anxiously awaiting the due date to storm Tanzania.
Munyal Markus Manunyi is President, International African Writers Association – IAWA
Email: [email protected]
