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| *Chinua Achebe |
The Chinua Achebe
Leadership Forum is being organized as a high profile international
platform to discuss Africa's challenges in
keeping with Professor Chinua Achebe’s life’s work. The theme for the gathering
this year is Africa's Future: Hopes And Impediments –
inspired by Professor Achebe's work. President John Dramani Mahama’s lecture is
entitled: "Women In Africa: How The Other Half Lives."
Immediately after the lecture, there will be a round table
discussion with the President, Honourable Nana Oye Lithur, who is the Republic of Ghana’s Minister for Gender, Children
and Social Protection; and three other panelists including the
moderator. Title/Subject of the round table discussion is “The Role of Women in the Development and
Democratization of Africa.”
*President John Dramani Mahama of Ghana
We would be honored if you could attend this important event that
will tackle clearly one of the great challenges facing the African continent.
President Mahama's lecture is sponsored by Bard College
President's Office, Bard College Center for International Affairs and
Civic Engagement, the Achebe Center at Bard and the Chinua Achebe
Foundation
Sincerely,
The Achebe Leadership Forum Organizing Committee
Please RSVP by sending the following information to Achebeleadershipforum@gmail.com
Number attending
Name(s) of those attending
Email or Phone #
Bard College in the next couple of days
will send out information about the
Time of the lecture
Program
Venue
Entertainment
Thank you.
The Organizing
Committee
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About Chinua
Achebe and the Chinua Achebe Foundation
“One of the great literary
voices of all time, Professor Chinua Achebe was also a beloved God-fearing
husband, father, uncle and grandfather, whose wisdom and courage are an
inspiration to all who knew him.”
Professor Chinua Achebe was
born in eastern Nigeria
on November 16, 1930, to Isaiah Okafor Achebe and Janet Achebe. His father
Isaiah Okafor Achebe was a catechist for the Church Missionary Society and
along with his wife travelled throughout Eastern Nigeria
to spread the gospel. That Christian upbringing would not only later mold
Professor Achebe’s thinking and worldview, but would profoundly inspire this
writings.
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After an early education in
British styled public schools and university in colonial Nigeria, Professor Chinua
Achebe became an author of over twenty books – poetry, novels, children’s
books, essays, and political as well as literary criticism. He is probably best
known internationally for the trio of novels globally recognized as “the
African Trilogy” – “Things Fall Apart,
No Longer At Ease and Arrow
of God.” Of the trio, “Arrow of God” is considered his magnum opus, and his first
novel “Things Fall Apart” –
the most widely read book in modern African literature - which depicts the
collision between British rule and traditional Igbo culture in his native
southeast Nigeria;
is considered a world literary masterpiece and is studied across the globe in
high schools and colleges. In 2012 he published his memoirs There Was A Country – which
earned him a spot on Foreign Policy magazine’s list of Top 100 Global thinkers
of 2012 for “forcing Africans
to examine their demons.”
Professor Achebe is credited as
the major 20th Century Literary voice to bring African culture and literature
to the rest of the world. A statement from the Nelson Mandela Foundation in
South quoted Nelson Mandela as referring to Professor Chinua Achebe as a writer
“in whose company the prison walls fell
down.” Professor Achebe established the Chinua Achebe Foundation in the
early ‘90s. Chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the foundation has worked
tirelessly to promote peace through the arts; showcase Africa
complex cultural heritage to the world while recapturing lost components of
African fine art, literature and languages.
Through his work as the editor
of the African Writers Series, published by England’s Heinemann publishers,
“the series served as a vehicle for whole generation of
African writers, ensuring an international voice to literary masters
including Ayi Kwei Armah, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Steve Biko, Ama Ata Aidoo,
Nadine Gordimer, Nuruddin Farah, Buchi Emecheta and Okot p'Bitek.”
For intermittent periods,
Professor Achebe lived and worked as a professor in the United States, lecturing widely and teaching in
universities in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York -
at Bard College
for over fifteen years - and most recently at Brown
University in Rhode Island.
During his long and distinguished career, “Achebe was the
recipient of over 40 honorary degrees from universities in England, Scotland,
Canada, South Africa, Nigeria
and the United States,
including Brown Univesity, Dartmouth
College and Harvard University. He
has been awarded the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, an Honorary Fellowship of the American
Academy of Arts and Letters (1982), a Foreign Honorary Member
of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2002), the
Nigerian National Order of Merit (Nigeria's highest honor for academic work),
the St. Louis literary award, and the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade amongst
others. The Man Booker
International Prize and The Medal of Honor of The National Arts
Club both in 2007 and the 2010 Dorothy and Lillian Gish
Prize are three of the more recent accolades Achebe received.”
Professor Achebe also earned a powerful reputation as a leading
critic of graft and misrule in his native Nigeria and twice refused one of
that nation’s highest honors Commander of the Federal Republic, in
2004 and 2011 in
protest. In addition, Professor Achebe wrote extensively about racial and
ethnic bigotry and leaves behind a reputation as one who lived as a formidable
advocate for the “least amongst us” – the down trodden, powerless and voiceless
everywhere.
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