 writer and filmmaker, Onyeka Nwelue, has been appointed a Visiting Fellow at the African Studies Centre, at the University of Oxford.

Dr. David Pratten, the Director of the African Studies Centre, in his letter of approval, said: “I am happy to inform you that the Management Committee of the African Studies Centre, University of Oxford, has approved your request for a Visiting Fellowship (Academic Visitor) at the Centre for the 2021-2022 academic year. The Fellowship was approved for between 1st of September 2021 to 30th of September 2022.

He continued, “The fellowship targets accomplished men and women from Africa – and other continents around the world who are interested in Africa.”

Nwelue will focus his research on inter-generational trauma and bring strong visibility of the African’s man vision in the world.

Born in 1988, South Africa-based Nwelue is an award-winning author of over 10 books, producer-director of six films and a bookseller. He instituted the James Currey Prize for African Literature and co-founded Abibiman Publishing.

His non-fictional work, Hip-Hop is Only for Children won the Creative Non-Fiction Book of the Year at the 2015 Nigerian Writers’ Awards.

Nwelue makes his UK debut on August 26, 2021 with his crime novel, 

UK: Writer-activist, Nwelue, now Visiting Fellow at Oxford

James Currey, co-founder of the Oxford-based James Currey Publishers, who, together with Nigerian novelist, Chinua Achebe, launched African Writers Series in 1962 decides to remember Rex Collins, the publisher of Wole Soyinka.

Jens-Petter Kjemprud, the Ambassador of Norway to Nigeria, recounts an encounter with Wole Soyinka, while he was in exile.

South African filmmaker, Mandla Dube, remembers how Wole Soyinka refused to take a selfie with him.

Nigerian journalist and culture promoter, Jahman Anikulapo, writes about travelling to Haiti, with Wole Soyinka.

Every page of the anthology, bears a recollection, an eulogy and love and admiration, celebrating Wole Soyinka at 87th!

Wole Soyinka: Encounters with the Grey Maverick is the chronicles of many, who believe that Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka is deathless.

Wole Soyinka: Encounters with the Grey Maverick

Saving Mungo Park

Hip Hop is Only for Children

The Lagos Cuban Jazz Club

The Beginning of Everything Colourful

A Country of Extra Ordinary Ghosts

The Space Bazaar

The Strangers of Braamfontein

Osas is a young and impressionable Nigerian painter, who escapes poverty and hardship in Benin City, into the chaotic and crime-ridden belly of Johannesburg, through the help of a travel agent. But to survive, he must live a life of adventure and spontaneity and criminality.

As Osas walks through the corners of Braamfontein, a suburb of Johannesburg, he encounters the Nigerian Janus-faced Chike, the Zimbabwean Machiavellian Chamai, the pawky Papi, the duplicitous Ruth, the saavy April and the fiendish Detectives Jiba and Booysen, leading to a bolt from the blue.

The Strangers of Braamfontein follows the lives of immigrants: the Nigerian drug-dealers, assassins, prostitutes, scammers, cultists, the Ethiopian human traffickers, the Congolese kidnappers, down to the Zimbabwean male-to-male prostitutes and drunks, the Malawian forgers, Angolan and Francophone syndicates, down to the South African blackmailers and gangs.

Laced with Nigerian and South African ethos, the sights and sounds of Braamfontein are subtly painted in this narrative of well-orchestrated and stereotyped characters.

The Abyssinian Boy

The House of Nwapa

The Great Masturbator

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With former President Olusegun Obasanjo, in his home. 

With South African activist, Denis Goldberg in Lagos. 

With Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, in his home.

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