Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, to be honored in Morocco, July 9
Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka will on Tuesday, July 9, 2024 be honored by the Academy of the Kingdom of Morocco in collaboration with the Pan African Writers Association (PAWA).
The historic event, which will hold at The Academy of the Kingdom of Morocco, Rabat, Morocco, from 8:00 AM GMT, is in commemoration of Professor Soyinka’s 90th birthday, and will feature a Symposium, Poetry Readings and a Gala Night.
Professor Soyinka, a foremost novelist, playwright, poet, essayist and activist, is the first Black African to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986.
Born on July 13, 1934 in Abeokuta, Nigeria, Professor Soyinka’s best known works include The Man Died, Death and the King’s Horseman, The Lion and the Jewel, The Trials of Brother Jero, The Interpreters, A Shuttle in the Crypt, Ake: The Years of Childhood, Idanre and Season of Anomy.
The Academy of the Kingdom of Morocco, a multidisciplinary public institution with legal and financial autonomy, was, according to Wikipedia, founded by King Hassan 11 on October 8, 1977, “with the objective of contributing to the development and promotion of scientific research, particularly in the fields of humanities, culture and arts.”
The PAWA, on its part, is a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), based in Ghana, and serves as an umbrella body of writers across the African continent and the Diaspora.
Celebrating Professor Soyinka at 90 in Morocco, a leading African nation, outside of Nigeria, the laureate’s country of birth, according to a United States of America (USA)-based art enthusiast, is a huge plus for pan-Africanism.
“This is the way to go. The continent must study, document, publicize, and indeed, celebrate the persons and the works of her creative artists,” he said, stressing that by so doing, the international market place of ideas will be compelled to pay more attention to African intellectuals, .
