Prof Nyamnjoh receives Eko Prize Award

Professor Francis Nyamnjoh, has won the Eko Prize Award for Literature for the year 2014. The award comes with a cash prize of FCFA 500,000.

This was one of the highlights of the 2015 Annual General Assembly of the Anglophone Cameroon Writers Association, ACWA, that was held in Bamenda recently.

Receiving the prize in one of the auditoriums of the Catholic University of Bamenda, Prof. Nyamnjoh expressed gratitude to ACWA and the donor, Eko Foundation USA, for their efforts in fostering Literature in Cameroon.

He dedicated the money to ACWA, for the growth of the association. He said he will continue to promote works of arts and writers’ associations.

Prof. Nyamnjoh has taught Sociology, Anthropology and Communication in Cameroon and Botswana, and has researched and written extensively on Cameroon and Botswana, where he was awarded the Senior Arts Researcher of the year prize in 2003.

In October 2012, he received a University of Cape Town Excellence Award for the Faculty of Humanities. He is the recipient of the African Students Hero Award of 2013 of Ohio University in USA. He is a B2 rated Professor and Researcher by the South African National Research Foundation.

Other winners of the Eko Prize included; Ethel Joffi, Dr. Charles Nfon and Ewusi. They went home with FCFA 125,000 each in non-fiction, poetry, prose, drama and lifetime literary works.

Speaking earlier during the opening ceremony of the Annual General Assembly in Bamenda, the President of the Anglophone Cameroon Writers’ Association, Dr. Mbuh Tennu Mbuh, enumerated some of the achievements the association has recorded, so far, such as; the reactivation of branches, the creation of a one-stop research spot in Buea and putting ACWA on the website.

He called on every Anglophone writer or publisher to join the ongoing renaissance in Anglophone Cameroon literature and praised the efforts of those who have stood by ACWA this far.

He said ACWA owes a duty to the forefathers of Anglophone Cameroon literature, to consolidate efforts in making “literature more visible, perceptive, and challenging in the negotiation of values that have often been taken for granted.” He singled out the Buea, Bamenda Yaounde and Douala chapters as vibrant chapters of the association.

According to the Coordinator of the Northwest Chapter, Peter Tangyie Suh Nfor, the Bamenda chapter is growing in lips and bounds and members are always ready to sacrifice as they did to host the Annual General Assembly for the first time.

He said during their first ever literary night after they were commissioned, key members of the association like Rev. Father Humphry Tatah Mbuy, Hon Lucas Tasi Ntang, Prof. Lilian Lem Atanga, Prof. Charles Alobwede, Dr. Epie, Dr Ndongmanji and Patrick Tatah, took as a challenge to examine Cameroon Literature in English from various perspectives.