Sakiru Adebayo wins the Amílcar Cabral Award.
Nigerian essayist Sakiru Adebayo, a specialist in African literature, won the second edition of the Amílcar Cabral Prize. The Prize is promoted by the Institute of Contemporary History and by Padrão dos Descobrimentos, in Lisbon.
The Amílcar Cabral Award
This was the second year of awarding the Amílcar Cabral prize. The first edition took place in 2021 and was won by historian Esmat Elhalaby, a researcher at the University of Toronto specializing in the history of the Middle East and South Asia.
The Amílcar Cabral Prize was created in 2021, by Padrão dos Descobrimentos / EGEAC and by Institute of Contemporary History, from the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, to recognize scientific studies on “the anti-colonial resistances” from the XNUMXth century to the present day.
It consists of a research grant in Lisbon, aimed at researchers of any nationality from Portuguese or foreign universities who study and produce knowledge, through a historical research article, on any topic and problem related to the history of anti-colonial resistance and colonial empires .
The Amílcar Cabral Prize was named after the politician and intellectual Amílcar Cabral (1924-1973), one of the founders of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), a man who made a unique contribution to the end of the European colonialism in Africa.
This Year's Award
Selected from among ten nominations, Adebayo's work, “The black soul is (still) a white man's artefact? Postcoloniality, post-Fanonism and the tenacity of race(ism) in A. Igoni Barrett's Blackass” is published in African Studies and focuses on the novel Blackass by Nigerian author A. Igoni Barrett.
According to the jury of the Amílcar Cabral Prize, the article by Sakiru Adebayo highlights
“The lingering shadows of European imperial cultural domination in Nigeria, its legacies and its effects on the Nigerian postcolonial imaginary”.
The competition jury, made up of Manuela Ribeiro Sanches, Victor Barros and Rui Gomes Coelho, also awarded two honorable mentions:
- historian Merve Fejzula of the University of Missouri for her article “Gendered Labour, Negritude and the Black Public Sphere,” published in Historical Research (OUP);
- to Burak Sayim, from the University of New York – Abu-Dhabi, with the article “Transregional by design: The early communist press in the middle east and global revolutionary networks”, published in the Journal of Global History (CUP).
The Amílcar Cabral Prize, despite having only been created last year, has already reached an international dimension.
Who is Sakiru Adebayo?
Sakiru Adebayo was born in Nigeria, having graduated from the University of Ibadan before moving to South Africa, where he completed a PhD at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in African Literature. He is currently an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies at the University of British Columbia, Canada.
Conclusion
This award, another one promoted by Portugal, is a significant milestone in the celebration of African literature and culture. With this recognition, the work of Sakiru Adebayo and the memory of Amílcar Cabral are elevated, further boosting the appreciation of studies on anti-colonial resistance. Let's hope that many more awards of this kind are created.
What do you think of this award? Could it be that using the name of the Amílcar Cabral Award is just a Portuguese cultural use? We want to know your opinion, do not hesitate to comment and if you liked the article, share and give a “like/like”.
Picture: © 2023 DR
