Africa in Dialogue Announces New Interns for March to August 2022
AFRICA IN DIALOGUE ANNOUNCES NEW INTERNS FOR MARCH TO AUGUST 2022
We are excited to welcome a cohort of ten new interns into the 2022 Africa in Dialogue Internship Program.
The Internship Program, led by our Internship Program Director, Nkateko Masinga, is a bi~annual learning and curating opportunity for creative individuals who are passionate, knowledgeable and interested in African Storytellers and the art of Interviewing.
In conceptualizing this internship, we were seeking to build a team that is diverse, not only in the African countries represented by the candidates but also in the people they wanted to have conversations with.
We were looking for individuals who were familiar with our work at Africa in Dialogue, had ideas on how to grow the platform and were passionate about the deliberate process of archiving creative and critical insights.
Our mission is inter-continental conversation, collaboration and community, so we are excited that our interns represent three regions of Africa:
From East Africa we have Elijah Bwojji (Uganda), Wanjiku Gathinji (Kenya), and Wanjiru Wang’ondu (Kenya).
From West Africa we have Tealee A. Brown (Liberia), Idowu Odeyemi (Nigeria), Uchenna Emelife (Nigeria), and Zenas Ubere (Nigeria).
From Southern Africa we have Lungelo Dlamini (Eswatini), Akona Metu (South Africa), and Boitumelo Riet (South Africa).
Learn more about our new interns below:
CONTRIBUTING INTERVIEWER FOR CREATIVE NON-FICTION:
AKONA METU (SOUTH AFRICA)
Akona Metu is a University of Cape Town alumna, having majored in Creative Writing & African Literature and Politics. She has a published poetry book called The Gift of a Thousand Words. Her poetry was included in the poetry anthology titled The Ground’s Ear. She is also a contributing writer of Trailblasian: Black Women Living in East Asia.
When she is not moonlighting as a full time mom, she can be found running around doing client orders for her personal care business or creating some prose and poetry for her current writing project.
CONTRIBUTING INTERVIEWER FOR CREATIVE NON-FICTION:
IDOWU ODEYEMI (NIGERIA)
Idowu Odeyemi is a poet and essayist and has published works in Brittle Paper, Icefloe Press, The Nation, and many others. A few notable awards that Idowu has received are the Ekiti State Prize for Literature, Merak Magazine (Liverpool, UK) Recognition Award. He was shortlisted for the Nigerian Students Poetry Prize in 2018. His works underscore how existentialism can offer a joint critique of the persistence of social issues such as sexism, racism, expansionism, and classism. His current research centers on social theory, existentialism, and the philosophy of race; as such, he is conceptualizing “soft decolonization” as against its traditional radical form and how African and Black existentialism poses liberation from the arms of neocolonialism and institutionalized racism.
CONTRIBUTING INTERVIEWER FOR FICTION:
WANJIKU GATHINJI (KENYA)
Wanjiku is an International Relations student in Nairobi and the co-founder of Read With Us (@rea.dwithus) an online community where they read in community.
She uses fiction as a method of escaping her current reality and learning about the world’s past histories.
CONTRIBUTING INTERVIEWER FOR FICTION:
UCHENNA EMELIFE (NIGERIA)
Uchenna Emelife is a literary curator, an arts administrator, and a bookseller.
He is the co-founder and creative director of Book O’Clock, a literary platform in Sokoto that hosts a literary blog, book clubs and a bookstore.
In 2021, he co-curated the first Book and Arts Festival in Sokoto and was nominated as Mediapreneur of the Year in the Founder of the Year Awards.
He currently serves as the bookstore manager of Maple Jali Bookstore Canada; State Coordinator, Praxis Hangout; PR Officer, Greenline Nurture Initiative; Content Writer / Social Media Manager, TEDxArkilla, Publicist, Echezonachukwu Nduka; and Editorial Intern, Isele Magazine.
CONTRIBUTING INTERVIEWER FOR POETRY:
TUMI RIET (SOUTH AFRICA)
Tumi Riet is a Theatremaker and currently a BA (Honours) in Drama and Theatre Studies and English Literature student. She is a multipurposed creative with an acute skill in devising and making performance theatre. Her passion lies in various forms of storytelling and expression. Performance, writing, poetry and the visual arts are some of the ways she uses to reach and understand herself and the society she inhabits.
She’s co-devised a theatre production, Holy Fail(2021); directored, devised and performed her first one-woman show, Light (2021). Her approach to creation is centred in interrogation of self, the realities around and beyond her. This is always a golden thread visible in her artistic produce.
CONTRIBUTING INTERVIEWER FOR POETRY:
ELIJAH BWOJJI (UGANDA)
Elijah Bwojji is the beloved son to his mother and father, a storyteller and an avid consumer of literature. He is a member of The Lantern Meet of Poets, producer of theater productions and audio-visual productions. He cofounded ibuajournal.com, an online publishing outfit in Kampala, Uganda. He moderates A Poetry Meet, which is a space poets and poetry lovers come every fortnight to read and critique poems they have written. When he is not thinking about why leaves fall off trees to die, he freezes motion to tell stories in snapshot moments using photography.
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR:
TEALEE A. BROWN (LIBERIA)
Tealee A. Brown is passionate about the growth and success of Africa’s literary and creative scene. Hence, she is enthusiastic about contributing to our cause at Africa in Dialogue.
Currently, Tealee is a 3rd-year student of Global Challenges at the African Leadership University, where she explores African communities and the issues they face bearing the goal of creating and contributing to sustainable solutions that solve them.
Tealee is particularly concerned with the role of the creative economy in the development of African economies and lives. She
believes that with the right amount of investment made, creative industries can contribute significantly to driving socio-economic development on the continent.
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR:
ZENAS UBERE (NIGERIA)
Zenas Ubere is a Nigerian writer. A Pushcart Prize nominee, he has works in Lolwe, Barren Magazine, Agbowó, Gordon Square Review, The Voyage Journal, and elsewhere. He is the coordinator of Lolwe Classes, and he tweets @zenasubere.
SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER:
LUNGELO DLAMINI (ESWATINI)
Lungelo Dlamini is a Swazi blogger and freelance content writer. She holds a Masters degree in Communications and Media Studies and a honours degree in African Literature. She has worked as a part-time media lecturer at the University of Eswatini. In 2018 she started a blog called Swazi Innerviews Online with the aim of sharing stories about Swazi women to inspire readers. She can usually be found on social media checking out African influencers and content creators. Also a lover of film-making and performance arts, she has dabbled in TV producing and acting. She lives in Mbabane with her mother and three cats.
SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER:
WANJIRU WANG'ONDU (KENYA)
Wanjiru is a feminist and literature enthusiast. She believes that literature is irreplaceable because it connects and comforts people. It teaches us perseverance, courage, empathy and
introspection.
Wanjiru hopes to make the posts informative, engaging and enlightening because getting the stories of African storytellers out there will make people, especially Africans, feel seen. She believes that diversity and inclusion is key, as more people see themselves in the stories and feel valued and understood.
Wanjiru is currently studying Computer Science at the ALU Rwanda Campus and is in her third year.
INTERNSHIP PROGRAM DIRECTOR:
NKATEKO MASINGA (SOUTH AFRICA)
Nkateko Masinga is an award-winning South African poet and 2019 Fellow of the Ebedi International Writers Residency. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2018 and her work has received support from Pro Helvetia Johannesburg and the Swiss Arts Council. In 2019, she won the Brittle Paper Anniversary Award. She is the founder and managing director of NSUKU Publishing Consultancy, and the author of a digital chapbook titled the heart is a caged animal, published by Praxis Magazine. Her latest work, psalm for chrysanthemums, was selected by the African Poetry Book Fund, in collaboration with Akashic Books, for the 2020 New Generation African Poets chapbook box set.
Nkateko joined Africa in Dialogue in 2019 as the Poetry Interviewer and she is now in her third year as the director of the Internship Program, a role in which she manages, edits, publishes and coordinates all initiatives curated by the cohorts of the Internship Program.
