Abdilatif Abdala

Abdilatif Abdalla is a Kenyan writer and political activist. He was imprisoned for his support of the Kenya People's Union, and wrote the poems collected in Sauti ya Dhiki while in solitary confinement, which were subsequently awarded the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature. Upon his release from prison in 1972 he left Kenya and worked at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and the Swahili Service of the BBC in London. He later held academic appointments teaching Swahili at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London and, most recently, the University of Leipzig in Germany. He retired in 2011. In 2018 he was awarded the Fonlon-Nichols Award of the African Literature Association.