OPEN COUNTRY MAG

How Wole Soyinka Inherited the Drama of the Gods — and Shadowed the Nigerian Tragedy Since the 1950s, the Nobel laureate has worked in rebellion, carving out a complex, fecund torque of an oeuvre. But as his plays of mythic vigor and Yoruba impulse revitalized Anglophone theatre, raising an art form to ritualistic heights, his force of personality kept him in the political arena, a close witness of an African affliction. Few artists have lived like him. Yet at 91, carrying the mantle of “greatest living writer,” he has one more great battle on his hands — with generations who once deified him. opencountrymag.com/wole-soyi…

Remy Ngamije (@remythequill) Faces the New Age of Namibian Literature The editor of Doek! (@doeklitmag), author of “The Eternal Audience of One,” and Commonwealth Prize winner is leading a charge to place his country on the literary map. s a child, Remy Ngamije got low scores in writing tests at school—5/10s, 1/5s. On the margins of his notebooks, his teachers scribbled in red: Remy does not have an imagination. “It’s not that I had no imagination,” he said on our Zoom call in late November, “it’s just that I was poor.” He was six then and still learning English. His lower middleclass family had just moved to Namibia from Kenya, where they had moved to from Rwanda, where he was born. “There was a very big pressure on my siblings and I to learn this language,” he recalled, “to write as well as we could in it, to gain a foothold in our education, which was always being disrupted with movement. I figured out that this thing could be used not only to express yourself, it could also be used to defend yourself. Being bullied was a linguistic thing for us, but as soon as you could speak this language and you could defend yourself, then you could diss somebody, you could talk back on the playfield.” His parents took him and his siblings to the public library on Saturday mornings and picked them in the afternoons. With learning came leisure and with leisure curiosity. In second grade, his teachers asked for more assignments, mostly essays on how the pupils spent their weekends. Ngamije had nothing new to add to previous essays: his weekends were the same because his family, like most poor families, did nothing exciting—he cleaned the house, went grocery shopping with his dad or mom, went to the library. His essays were repetitive, so his teacher wrote: Remy needs to cultivate an imagination. Being competitive, he felt discouraged. He was improving his writing but his teachers were searching for storytelling. One weekend, he decided to lie in his essay, and began writing things he did not do, things his family lacked money to do. He was shocked when his teacher scored him 9/10. Later, he convinced himself that he wasn’t lying: the essays were creative expression and he had just discovered how to exercise it. As the years passed, he took that moment as when his attitude changed, and he applied it in his understanding of literature. Continue reading: opencountrymag.com/remy-ngam…

Introduction to 20.35 Africa Volume IX: “Sit with Their Grief . . . Reconcile with the Devastation” The poems in 20.35 Africa Volume IX, guest-edited by Akosua Zimba Afiriyie-Hwedie and Antony Fangary, “remind us that the suffering in the world is inflicted by us, on us,” but also “that the thick layered air of exhaustion has not rid us of our . . . dreams.” Off the page, different concerns plague our livelihood. Sometimes, they present as ordinary and inconsequential, and other times, as global and moral. All of these are nonetheless existential. They shape our being, the way we navigate and make meaning of the world. Writers go to the page to tell the troubled stories that animate their ways into their lives, countries, and continents. These poets in 20.35 Africa Volume IX show the range of the existential crises faced in the world they live in, and they paint all the filth, beauty, and joy of it. Star Zahra’s “Soot” opens the anthology with these lines: “When I close my eyes to the pleasuring / sound of rain drops dancing on the tin roof, / A child closes theirs / to soot.” — a poem that reconciles beauty and privilege with the suffering around us. It is arranged like a wall galleried with paintings, and while three of the five frames capture the simple pleasures of life, they are interrupted with differences from places and people who can’t have those pleasures. It begs the questions: Who gets to experience the beauty of living and who doesn’t? What’s the cost of this disparity? Soot? This dark aftermath of burning and its threat to life recurs throughout this volume. Joemario Umana writes in “What the Road Refuses to Name” of a burnt vehicle by the roadside “crow-coloured and smoking, opens a door of fear / inside my body, how its windows reflect the half-moons / of men running from a country that keeps swallowing its own breath.” He confronts how a country’s failure has led to the constant death, kidnapping, and terrorizing of its citizens. Each line grapples with the danger of being in a place that refuses you the refuge of home, and the anxiety that comes with looking for death in everything. His other poem, “Sunflowers at the Mouth of a Closed Door,” contends with a similar struggle, the freedom and dreams of people stifled and hope gradually lost: “I do not know / how to stay loyal to a wound that keeps opening / its mouth… / Even heaven seems to be rationing light.” This juxtaposition of the bodily and place, and the doubt of “I do not know,” hold the poem’s core reality and the writer’s relationship with his country Nigeria. This anthology is concerned with the body, the land, the harm and damage done to their soft expressions of life. In a time when the machine and industrial complex numb our relationship to the body and the earth, how do we as writers respond to the spiritual disconnection that ensues? Read more: opencountrymag.com/introduct…

Cardinal Francis Arinze, the most senior African and Black cardinal, was papabile, a candidate for the Papacy: he was, for some bookmakers, the favourite. Read the story of how a young priest from Onitsha, Nigeria, became the highest-ranking African and Black official of the Roman Catholic Church, and a storied icon of modern apostolicism here: opencountrymag.com/cover-sto…

Name Redacted (@NameRedactedPod) is among the five recipients of the inaugural Open Country Mag Curatorial Fellowship, sponsored by Africa No Filter. Their proposal was to record Season 2 of One Foot in the Closet, a podcast on LGBTQI+ experiences. The initiative supported One Foot in the Closet with $1,000 and mentorship by Open Country Mag editor Otosirieze (@Otosirieze), Lumen Prize winning artist Minne Atairu, and A Nasty Boy founder Innanoshe Akuson (@InnanosheA). Name Redacted is a queer, polygender East African podcaster. They are the creator and host of One Foot in the Closet. Season 1 of the podcast was funded by a Queering Encounters in African Feminisms Grant from The House of African Feminisms, a project by the Goethe-Institut Kigali, Goethe-Institut Lagos, and Goethe-Institut Johannesburg. The first two episodes of Season 2, “Angry Baby” and “Mugarura: Part 1,” appear at the end of this interview. Read here: opencountrymag.com/a-podcast…

The organization (@Tech4HerAfrica) is taking a multi-sectoral approach with timeline-based goals. Its Girls Slay Code Academy, started in 2017, aims to launch 10,000 female developers by 2025. Read more: opencountrymag.com/folio-nig…

Adedayo Agarau (@adedayoagarau) pushed back against the idea that writing produced outside Nigeria was less Nigerian. “You know, I always say that when someone is writing about living in the U.S. or in Los Angeles, they are writing that experience as a Black man, as someone with different roots. So the poetry is very Nigerian, because that is where it’s coming from.” His first chapbook, "For Boys Who Went," published in 2016, echoes the inherited burdens of masculinity, the violences boys learn to carry early on. In the then small but growing Nigerian online poetry scene, it became one of the most-read chapbooks, with over a thousand downloads on Arthorpedia, a platform owned by Kukogho Iruesiri Samson, who was also responsible for launching several other notable poetry careers. “I became that guy,” he chuckled, “the one who would write a poem, and suddenly everyone was writing their own version with the same title.” His uncles, uninterested in literature, began calling him For Boys Who Went. Read more: opencountrymag.com/what-aded…

OPPORTUNITY FOR WRITERS!📣 The Sabi Arts Playwrights Prize (@sabiartsprize) is an annual award for Nigerian playwrights aged 18 and above, residing in Nigeria or the diaspora. The prize is open to original, previously unpublished, and unproduced plays. The inaugural edition features a total cash prize pool of ₦1,400,000 alongside residency, production, and publication opportunities structured into three winning categories. -TIMELINE & SELECTION PROCESS- Submissions Window: 1st October 2026-20th December 2026 Longlist Announcement: 31st January 2027 Shortlist Announcement: 28th February 2027 Winners Announcement: 31st March 2027 Eligible entries will undergo a three-stage blind review process: 1. An initial reading stage by an anonymous readers’ group to determine the longlist. 2. A second reading stage to select the shortlist. 3. Final jury deliberations to determine the winners. The inaugural jury consists of renowned theatre and literary practitioners across dramatic writing, directing, production, and artistic leadership, including Farah Lawal Harris, Kelvin Mary Ndukwe, Rufus Nwoko, and Kesiena C. Obue.

Working behind the scenes has not made Hakeem "Effects" Onilogbo (@Hakeem_effect) a self-effacing artist. He speaks declaratively, without irony. His speech is halting, punctuated with little pauses, fillers, and drags, the phrases and clauses often ending in a rising tone, loud and assured. “I can readily say I’m the one that changed special effects in the whole of West Africa,” he said in our first interview on Google Meet. I weighed the claim in my head, tempted to ask for elaboration, but also conscious to not disrupt his train of thought. I reached out on Instagram days later and he sent a confirmatory voice note. “Not just in Nigeria, but West Africa,” he repeated. “Because the way special effects were being done [in the past] is so different from [the way it now is since] when I stepped in. Kudos to the legends that took the baton to that stage before handing it over to me. [But] ever since I started doing special effects, everything [has] changed. People, they had not been doing prosthetics; I am the one that started it. The pyrotechnics — using elements of fire, explosions, and all that — Hakeem Effects started it. [And] a whole lot of things, realistic make-up. So I’m the one that transformed the face [of SFX] before people now started watching what I’ve done, building on the foundation.” Read more: opencountrymag.com/hakeem-ef…

Between Aisha Ahmad and horses, it was love at first sight. At the Kaduna Polo Club, where she had gone with friends to watch a tournament for the first time, she was fascinated by the animals. She knew immediately, as she watched the horse-riders gallop in their helmets and boots, chasing the ball around, that she wanted to work with the horses, to be a polo player. Read more: opencountrymag.com/folio-nig…

"There are people in this world who have a distaste for poetry. Not long ago someone almost beat me on Twitter because I told them they could actually enjoy poetry; they did not care, they said. But you have to care for beauty, I wanted to shout back. Actually, it’s fine if you don’t care for beauty by way of poetry, but at least care about the beauty of watching a mallam peel an orange—a kind of poetry. But it’s not that people do not care for poetry; it’s that they feel like they don’t get it. If you are one of those who don’t get poetry, I have a song for you." Read more: opencountrymag.com/revel-aga…

Rather than a “renaissance,” Atemnkeng argues that “what is happening now is that there is a new wave of emerging and mid-career writers from the English-speaking region who are getting acclaim that their predecessors didn’t achieve.” He pointed out that since the publication of Limbe to Lagos, five of its 10 contributors have gotten into MFA programmes in the U.S. and the U.K. “Talented young writers are getting the recognition they deserve, writing books that are urgent, playful, and experimental, winning awards and getting good agents,” MacViban said. “I see Cameroonians reading more home-based writers, I see more translations across the official languages and local languages. There are already signs that the future we dreamed of is here.” Continue reading: opencountrymag.com/cameroons…

When Afabwaje Kurian began writing her 2024 novel Before the Mango Ripens, titled after that Gbagyi proverb, she initially alluded to that displacement. That draft of the novel was set in a longer timeline, from 1970 to 1976. She cut it because it wasn’t central to the story of Christianity that she was uncovering, and the published version plays out over the course of four months in 1971. In it, Zanya, a popular young missionary who believes that he has been called to lead the flock in the fictional town of Rabata, faces the reluctance of Reverend Jim, his mentor. They are at a crossroads, and other dichotomies are at play: the indigene converts and the foreign missionaries, the labourers and the church that underpays them. Continue reading on our website: opencountrymag.com/afabwaje-…

Working behind the scenes has not made Onilogbo (@Hakeem_effect) a self-effacing artist. He speaks declaratively, without irony. His speech is halting, punctuated with little pauses, fillers, and drags, the phrases and clauses often ending in a rising tone, loud and assured. “I can readily say I’m the one that changed special effects in the whole of West Africa,” he said in our first interview on Google Meet. I weighed the claim in my head, tempted to ask for elaboration, but also conscious to not disrupt his train of thought. I reached out on Instagram days later and he sent a confirmatory voice note. opencountrymag.com/hakeem-ef…

One of the many viral stories was by a young woman named Obianuju Iloanya. She detailed how, in 2012, when she was 17, her brother, Chijioke, was arrested by SARS; their family traveled to the SARS base in Awkuzu where they saw him but were not allowed to reach him; when they returned, the head officer told them, “I have killed your son and there’s nothing you can do about it.” The SARS officer who made this comment, Obianuju said, was called James Nwafor. The moment she named him as her brother’s killer, many more people began to share their stories of the man, reputed to be reckless with human lives, a Chief Superintendent of Police said to have overseen the dumping of dead bodies in Ezu River in 2013, bodies believed to be victims of Awkuzu SARS. CSP James Nwafor became one of the faces of the murders of unarmed young Nigerians. End SARS ended on a fatal note, on October 20, 2020, with the Lekki Massacre, where the Nigerian military opened fire on unarmed protesters, and later denied it, despite video evidence. The government, meanwhile, made a show of listening, convening panels across the country to hear survivors of SARS and families of victims, and to recommend terms of justice. Out of the estimated over 100 hearings at the Anambra State panel, a reported 90 indicted CSP Nwafor, but, as the man had told the families beforehand, nothing happened to him. The stories of the families of four young men murdered by SARS officials form the core of Awaiting Trail, a new documentary by the media entrepreneur and journalist Chude Jideonwo. #ENDSARS #October20 opencountrymag.com/families-…

Cultural organization Unchained Vibes Africa (UVA) (@UvAfrica) will host its flagship two-part civic-creative event, the 4th Freedom Vibes Summit and Freedom Vibes 10.0 Concert, on Saturday, 14 November 2026, at Freedom Park, Lagos Island. Operating under the central theme, "The Vibes and the Ballot: Art, Power and the 2027 Choice," the initiative will bring together artists, skit makers, content creators, legal experts, media executives, civil society leaders, traditional rulers, government officials and state regulatory authorities to protect artistic integrity, promote creative freedom and peaceful civic participation ahead of Nigeria's 2027 general elections. The 4th Freedom Vibes Summit will be convened from 9:30 AM to 4:30 PM (WAT) at Kongi's Harvest Gallery in a hybrid format, accommodating in-person delegates alongside virtual participants. Structured to move beyond conventional discourse, the summit brings together key creative industry bodies, alongside statutory regulators.