Celebrating Ndi-Igbo

Jackie Kay was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1961 to a Scottish mother and an Igbo father. She was adopted by a white couple at birth and was brought up in Glasgow, studying at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and Stirling University where she read English. The experience of being adopted by and growing up within a white family inspired her first collection of poetry, The Adoption Papers (1991). The poems deal with an adopted child's search for a cultural identity and are told through three different voices: an adoptive mother, a birth mother and a daughter. The collection won a Scottish Arts Council Book Award, the Saltire Society Scottish First Book of the Year Award and a commendation by the Forward Poetry Prize judges in 1992. The poems in Other Lovers (1993) explore the role and power of language, inspired and influenced by the history of Afro-Caribbean people, the story of a search for identity grounded in the experience of slavery. The collection includes a seq...

Chioma Nnamaka (born June 15, 1985 in Uppsala, Uppland, Sweden) is a professional basketball player of Swedish and Igbo heritage She is a member of the WNBA's Atlanta Dream. Chioma attended high school at Fryshusets Kunskaps Centrum. Playing basketball, she won the Swedish Championship on three occasions. Nnamaka then went to the United States to attend Georgia Tech. She made the Dean's list studying International Affairs, and played basketball for the Yellow Jackets. Nnamaka was selected 21st overall in the 2008 WNBA Draft by the San Antonio Silver Stars with their first pick. She was the highest draft pick ever chosen from Georgia Tech. She was then traded on the same day to the expansion team Atlanta Dream, where she completed her rookie season. On January 14, 2009 Nnamaka was waived by the Dream, she currently plays for Union Hainaut in France.

One to watch Chinonye Chukwu, a third-year MFA candidate at Temple University, is a Nigerian-born, Alaskan-raised screenwriter and director. Artistically, she is most concerned with images that are rich with cultural nuances, often dealing with the complex and contradictory issues of ethnic identity, black female identity and cross-cultural (cross-generational) interaction. Chinonye’s most recently completed film, Igbo Kwenu!, is the recipient of the PIFVA Subsidy Grant from the independent film community and both the “Best Motion Picture Award” and “Best Screenplay Award” at the 2009 Diamond Screen Festival. She was also a recipient of a 2009 Princess Grace Award. Presented by the Royal Family of Monaco, the Princess Grace Foundation-USA honors six student filmmakers in the nation. Currently, she is in finishing up production on another fiction narrative, this time exploring the gentrification of North Philadelphia through a little girl’s desire to be a ballerina. Born in Rivers State...

Aneto Okonkwo is the Product Manager of Baraza. Baraza is Google’s newest Question and Answer service. It is a service focused on creating ways for Africans to interact and share knowledge by asking and answering questions, many of them hyper local, or of regional interest only. Aneto was a senior at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, majoring in Management Science and Engineering. He worked at Microsoft Corporation in 2005 as a Program Manager intern in the Microsoft Office Project group. He had previously completed his undergraduate degree in Management Science & Engineering (with a concentration in Organizations Technology & Entrepreneurship) at the same school where he served as Student Body Vice President. Aneto is an associate of the Nigeria leadership Initiative (NLI) and served as a Technology Analyst for Obama for America Campaign. He was also a member of the Obama Presidential Transition Team on Technology. Aneto hails from Enugu, Nigeria. His interests inc...

One to watch 22 year old Nmachi Jidenma is currently a Graduate student in the Department of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell. Prior to Graduate school she did agribusiness research focusing on African countries for a D.C. based NGO, TechnoServe and performed independent research as an undergraduate student on African Capital Markets. She also interned at JPMorgan’s New York office and at Accenture’s office in Nigeria. While an undergraduate student, she won the Horn-Theophilus Award for outstanding extracurricular service. She is currently the Founder/Publisher of CP-Africa.com, a Pan-African website that features progressive African ideas, positive trends and inspiring entrepreneurs. CP-Africa is a new online crusade to reshape the Africa conversation. It began when Nmachi started blogging about progressive things happening in Nigeria on her Facebook page. She later added topics from other African countries and eventually moved the content to a Blogger account. The CP-Afr...

Arinze Kene is an actor and playwright. He is best known for playing the character of Connor Stanley in the BBC's EastEnders . Born in Nigeria, Arinze relocated to Hackney, East London with his family in the early 1990s as a toddler. He has also appeared in stage productions such as playing Simba in The Lion King, the short-lived Boney M musical Daddy Cool, and in June 2009 he played strutting lothario Raymond LeGrendre in the musical Been So Long , based on Ché Walker's 1998 play, which opened at the Young Vic. Kene also plays the lead in 2010 UK Film Council feature Freestyle and is currently splitting his time between filming EastEnders in Hertfordshire and rehearsals for his new play Estate Walls which is being staged at the Oval House Theatre, South London. Sources: soulculture.co.uk Thanks Cuz

24 year old Ikenna Orizu is the founder and CEO of Tru Spot! , one of the Africa's few Web 2.0 success stories. Tru Spot! is a social music platform designed to support African artists, fans, local music and the entertainment world at large. Tru Spot! connects users who share similar tastes and brings the artists they love closer to them via interviews and chat sessions. The site also provides live and custom radio streams, music ringtones for your mobile phones and wallpapers. Tru Spot! started off as a web site named NaijaSpace in May of 2006 - a podacst for African DJ mixes. It re-launched as Tru Spot! when Ikenna decided to scale the project upwards and take African music to a global audience. Tru Spot! also features a unique live station with well produced shows and hosts. It has about 750 thousand listeners. Tru Spot! also developed the first African radio blackberry web application. Sources: StartupsNigeria , Wikipedia