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Author of Economic Diversification in Nigeria: The Politics of Building a Post-Oil Economy, Zainab Usman, believes the task of economic diversification is Nigeria’s foremost development challenge: ‘Nigeria needs to diversify its economy beyond reliance on oil exports, a large informal economy and small-scale agriculture to become a more modern and highly industrialized one that generates jobs, opportunities and self-actualization for the vast majority of Nigerians.’
When I read publications with new information, it is either this material successfully changes my point of view or that it confirms what I already (subconsciously) believed.
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About the Author
is the Director of the Africa Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington D.C.
Nigerian novelist, poet and author of Graceland, Chris Abani, does not believe ‘Nigerian literature’ exists as a category: ‘It is a common misconception that there is a fixed category that can be read as essentially “Nigerian literature”. Nigeria has 500 nations, 500 languages and about 2,000 dialects. While culture and language can overlap, the level of diversity is such that Nigerian literature cannot be easily narrowed down.’
For the co-founder and publishing director, of Cassava Republic Press, which marks its 20th anniversary this year, Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, it is telling that African literature is often pronounced dead in recent years, when more women and queer voices are becoming more prominent: ‘The loudest obituary writers about African literature tend to be men. These elegies seem to come from a tacit sense of personal or generational displacement rather than from the actual state of the field.’
Nigerian poet, novelist and author of Madame Sosostris and the Festival for the Broken-Hearted, Ben Okri, argues that Nigerian literature doesn’t always have to be about Nigeria: ‘Nigerian literature limits itself to Nigeria and then limits even the ways in which the country can be written about. What we want is a vast literature, a great literature…that speaks to all humanity.’
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