Nigerian writer, Alex Kadiri, has won the 2023 Afritondo Short Story Prize for his story “The Hyena and the Two-Headed Goat”.
Afritondo made the announcement in an online ceremony held on Friday, April 7.
Kadiri is the first Nigerian to win the annual literary prize seeing off competition from nearly 400 writers from across the world. Previous editions of the prize were won by Howard Meh-Buh Maximus (Cameroon, 2022), Desta Haile (Ethiopia, 2021), and Jarred Thompson (South Africa, 2020).
Kadiri’s winning entry, “The Hyena and The Two-Headed Goat”, was described as “mesmerising” by Doreen Baingana, the chair of the judging panel. “[This story] really spoke about a community’s pain and love, the forces of good and evil clashing,” Doreen added.
The judges were also very complimentary of the entries on the longlist. Ayesha Harruna Attah said: “I thought that the stories were amazing, they were diverse, they were surprising. They were such tender stories. They upended the theme of aliens, and what was interesting to me was that outsiders became familiar in almost every single one of these stories.”
The theme of the competition was “aliens” and an anthology of the longlisted stories is expected by the Summer of 2023.
The winner of the Prize takes home $1000 with the other shortlisted writers receiving honorariums of $100 each.
Afritondo is a UK-based media and publishing platform that aims to improve diversity in publishing by offering African and black minority writers an accessible platform for publishing their stories and sharing them with a wider audience.
