Dr. Allwell Uwazuruike is an academic and a writer. A lecturer at the University of Central Lancashire, United Kingdom, Uwazuruike is also the co-editor of Afritondo, an online magazine based in the United Kingdom and the organisers of the short story prize competition recently won by à South African. He recently published a book on human rights in Africa. In this e-interview with Simeon Mpamugoh, he speaks on why he set up the magazine and the challenges of convincing media platforms in the West to feature African content.

How did you come about Afritondo online magazine?

Afritondo was a collective project, at the centre of which were my brother, Confidence, and myself. Essentially, we wanted a platform for promoting and sharing African and black minority stories. As Africans in the diaspora, it was not always easy convincing media platforms in the West to feature African content. Even some platforms that claimed to be “African” were only in name, and one couldn’t help but notice the difficulty they faced in making the right call on which article or story to publish. We also wanted to contribute to what I consider to be an ever increasing and fast rising symphony of African and black minority voices across the world.

What informed the short story prize competition Afritondo organises and how old is it? 

The short story competition was created in order to discover new talents and bring out the best of African literature. Of course, there are other writing contests that seek to reward African writers, but there is certainly no harm in further encouraging writers in what must be a very challenging and competitive literary environment. On our part, we wanted to share African stories with the world. Normal stories of normal people. We did not want a competition with a theme that focused solely on negatives, if you will, or that put the continent or black minorities in a certain pre-determined box. This was why we chose the theme of love for the inaugural contest. Something ordinary, yet special. Something everyone could relate to whether you were African or European or Asian. We want the world to read and appreciate African love stories—to see what love means to us and the different ways we express it.

 What is your assessment of African writers and their ability to tell authentic African stories to a wider audience? 

I think we have some really talented writers! I’ve had the opportunity of reading the longlisted stories and was awed by their quality. The expression “authentic African stories” is, of course, open to interpretation. My view is that everyone’s story is unique and authentic to them in the context of their lived experiences. For the competition, we just wanted to see a hint of Africa for instance in the setting or characterisation of the story.

What are the findings from the entries on “love”, the theme of this year’s competition? 

People have different conceptions of love, and I think this was part of the idea of the competition. We were interested in finding out the various interpretations and conceptions of love in Africa. My brother has written an article on some of his observations from reading the longlist, and we’ll be looking to publish it in the coming weeks.

How have African publishers fared in offering diversified Africans and black minority writers equal opportunity to publish their stories and share them with a wider audience across the globe?

That is an interesting question, and I am not quite sure I know the answer—at least not without a survey of some sort. I would say, from personal observation, that the situation is getting better despite past challenges that publishers and writers on the continent have been faced with. We are seeing new publishers sprout up and try to connect with writers. There are, of course, challenges with funding and piracy, but the situation is getting better.

What do you think is the role of arts in shaping African politics?

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I think it has a very important role to play. There is, of course, the role of drawing attention to poor leadership through, for instance, books and satire. There is also the crucial role of shaping and forming young minds who will be the leaders of the future.

There were 421 short story entries received from 19 countries that entered the competition, which you plan to publish the anthology during summer. What plans do you have in place for formal presentation of the book in UK and Nigeria?

That’s another good question. Yes, we were impressed by the number of entries and we plan to publish an anthology of the longlisted stories in August. With regard to a formal presentation, our plans have certainly been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and we are working on ways around it. We will, of course, contact distributors across Africa to ensure that our readers can get a copy of the book when it is released.

How many authors of African extraction have you published?  

We have published writings of hundreds of writers on our website afritondo.com. These include short stories, poems, and articles. We are only now taking the plunge into book publishing and are looking to publish five to six titles by the end of 2021.

What is your take on e-publishing?  Is it capable of amputating hard cover books?

I think it is a matter of taste. Some people like e-books, others prefer paperbacks. I even have some friends that go for audiobooks and listen to them while driving or taking walks. E-books have certainly won over a lot of readers due to its convenience. For instance, you could walk around with one thousand books in your phone or kindle and read them any time you want. You cannot do this with hard copies. However, some people still want to hold the book in their hands, flip through it, rustle the pages, smell it, stroke the cover, line it up in a bookcase. For this latter group of book lovers, the book is more than just the words written on its pages and I doubt e-publishing will end that any time soon.

What are your thoughts about reading culture in Africa, particularly, Nigeria, your homestead? 

I think it’s a mixed bag, really. And the situation may not necessarily be different across Africa and, maybe, even the rest of the world. People who want to read still read. Perhaps, particularly for Africa, there is a concern that some people who want to read do not have easy access to the books that they want. And this does not apply solely to those that don’t have the means or resources to buy books. I recall some time back in 2006 or 2007. I was in Owerri, Nigeria, and wanted to buy a copy of Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun. I toured all the main book shops in Owerri without success. I was also looking for a book on chess at around the same time, and there was not a single one sold across the state. You could have probably found the books in Lagos and Abuja, but certainly not in Imo. By sheer stroke of luck, my father had been gifted a copy of Half of a Yellow Sun on one of his trips to the US, and I found the book lying idly on his table. It was like a gift from God.

I believe things have changed a lot since then, particularly with the advent of e-publishers like Okada Books. I also think we need to do more to cultivate reading culture across Africa. I don’t know if movies and TV series are helping but, these days, there are some people that prefer watching a movie adaptation to actually reading the book. But it could also work the other way around—people buying books because of a popular movie adaptation. Apart from cultivating a reading habit, we should also appreciate the effort and resources that go into writing and publishing. Sometimes, when you tell a friend that you have just published a book, rather than ask how they can buy it, they ask how they can get a free copy. So, there is still reluctance, in some quarters, to buy and read books.

What do you think gives African writers in Europe an edge over their counterparts at local level? 

I think writers in the West may have an edge in the area of access to resources, agents, and publishers. These are some of the challenges we are trying, working of course with other publishers, to alleviate. I believe the continent may have missed out on some talents, simply because they did not have access to the necessary resources and no one discovered them. If you look at some of the “big” and emerging African writers, you will notice that quite a number of them either write from abroad or have some form of foreign connection or contact. This, I think, should raise concerns.