Masaoki Miyamoto Emeritus Professor, Osaka University of Foreign Studies, Japan

"Africa had long been deprived of her voice and pen, the tools needed to articulate her dreams and hopes, to define her total experiences. But during the last century Africa managed to recover her initiative and began to talk in her own voice and write with her own pen. Now, we know that 21st century Africa has begun to liberate herself, where the potentials of her languages and literatures are enabling a new portrait of Africans to emerge."