Winners of the international essay competition of the 11th Wole Soyinka International Cultural Exchange (WSICE) would be handsomely rewarded at the prize announcement ceremony on Tuesday, July 14 via Zoom.
The 2020 Wole Soyinka Essay Competition ran from June 5 to 26 in senior and junior categories.
Participants were from five language zones; Anglophone (English), Francophone (French), Cinophone (Chinese), Hispaphone (Hispanic) and Lusophone (Portuguese).
Specifically, entries came from Nigeria, South Africa, Nepal, Pakistan, Ghana, Uganda, Angola, Barbados, Brazil, The Gambia, US, Cuba and Cameroon.
The other countries were Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia, China, United Arab Emirates, Canada, Philippines, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Zimbabwe.
The winners in the two categories will win cash prizes in various dollar sums: Senior — Global $500=$1000; Junior — Global J+$300=$600, Global Winner CDP-S-$200 R-$100=300, Winner CDP-J-2000. R-$100=300.
The theme of the competition ‘I AM because YOU ARE’ was inspired by UBUNTU, the Southern African cultural philosophy on the principle of interdependence of the human family.
The essay writing competition is the students/youths section of the annual project. The over 2000 entries went through four levels of adjudication involving 12 judges appointed from the various language zones, most of them in the academic and cultural advocacy sectors.
The longlists were then sent to external judges to serve as auditors of the decisions arrived at by the adjudicators.
“We went through that long, elaborate process to ensure transparency of the competition, and integrity of the entire project. Though transparency and integrity had always been our core principles since the inception of the project 11 years ago, they have become even more imperative now that we have taken the project to the global stage,” stated Executive Producer of the WSICE, Teju Kareem.
The winners would be unveiled during the ‘Meet & Greet’ which will hold virtually in the evening hours of Tuesday, July 14,
The second main programme of the WSICE, ‘The Wole Soyinka Advocacy Session ‘will hold for two days, Sunday, July 12 to Monday, 13th, via Zoom, and it will feature 13 paper presentations on the main theme with two keynotes: “Pursuit of Happiness and our Common Humanity” by Prof. Li-Rong Lilly Cheng of the Chinese Cultural Centre, San Diego University and Dr Michael Li, an educator and president of Beijing Shenmo Education Group
The second session of the Advocacy is on the theme: “Reimagining Our World post-Pandemic’, and will be moderated by Professor Segun Ojewuyi, a theatre and culture scholar. Aside from being the head of Directing at the Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, USA, he is also Co-Executive Producer of the WSICE.
The keynoter is Professor (Fr) Joseph Brown, a Roman Catholic priest, who teaches in the Africana Studies Department of the same school, SIU, as Ojewuyi. Other speakers are Nathan Kiwere, a publisher/filmmaker (Uganda), Dr, Ngozi Nwaneri, a global development policy expert (Nigeria), Lucille Huguet, a journalist (France), Veronique Maisier, language teacher/researcher (France) and Daves Guzha, a theatre artist and social activist from Zimbabwe.
The project’s third programme is the exhibition, ‘Timeless Memories’ created and curated by Oludamola Adebowale to celebrate the legacy of Prof Soyinka, and other icons of the cultural sector.
The exhibition will feature new illustrative works, including excerpts from the November 2019 exhibition and also an e-Artbook that will be available for download for free on the WSICE website.