Celebrating Ndi-Igbo

E. C. Osondu is an Igbo writer known for his short stories. His story "Waiting" won the 2009 Caine Prize, for which he had been a finalist in 2007. Osondu's stories have been published in Agni, Guernica, Vice, Fiction, and The Atlantic. Voice of America, his debut collection of short stories was published in 2010. In Nigeria, Osondu was an advertising copywriter. In 2008, he was a fellow at Syracuse University in creative writing. In 2010, he is an assistant professor of English at Providence College, teaching courses in creative writing, Introduction to Literature, and the Development of Western Civilization. "Waiting," published in October 2008 by Guernica magazine, describes life in a refugee camp from a child's point of view. Meakin Armstrong, the magazine's fiction editor, noted that "it isn't pretentious nor rife with literary trickery. It's simply a well-told story about a kind of life most of us couldn't even begin to imagine....

Frustrated by his country’s epileptic power supply, and tired of being mocked by his Ghanaian friends, Abuja-based ICT consultant Amara Nwankpa joined forces with other media-savvy Nigerians to set up Light Up Nigeria. It’s an online protest group advocating an urgent resolution to Nigeria’s chronic electricity problem – a situation now so bad that Nigeria was recently reported to have signed an agreement with neighbouring Cameroon to help provide the “giant of Africa” with electricity. Light Up Nigeria is now a worldwide, online phenomenon with tens of thousands of supporters on Twitter and Face book who are helping to keep the issue of power supply at the top of the political agenda. 32-year-old Amara Nwankpa was recently associated with the youth debate group called What About Us? Source: AfripopMag

Nonso Diobi was born July 17th, in Enugu to the Diobi’s family. Nonso Diobi grew up in Anambra state, Nigeria. He grew up with a family of 5, 2 girls and 3 guys. As the last child of the family, Nonso Diobi always saw himself in the limelight and as an independent individual. He began his own mini business at a tender age, selling clothes to his fellow individual at his high school. His parents exposed him to explore his God given talents by doing stage plays at his local church when he was 15years old. He became one of the best in his church drama group. In the fall of 2001, He decided to take his acting skills to another level by entering into the now famous Nollywood. He featured in his first movie “Border line” which was shot by top director “Adim William”. His first breakthrough movie “Hatred” came right after he did Border line” Nonso Diobi never looked back, as Nollywood keeps calling on this young, handsome, dynamic, and multitalented star with many movies to his credits. As th...

Afam Onyema is the founder and Chief operating officer of the GEANCO Foundation, a non-profit healthcare purveyor. GEANCO Foundation has a simple goal - to save and improve the lives of vulnerable women and children in the African country of Nigeria. They seek to attain this goal by developing world-class medical, educational and athletic facilities. Their projects will improve health conditions and learning opportunities for Nigerians, enriching their lives and empowering them to strengthen their communities. It follows Afam's father's dream of building a world-class hospital in Nigeria. Afam has since recruited Forest Whitaker, Jimmy Kimmel, politicians, Nobel Prize winners, and members of the Forbes 400 Richest Americans as key donors. Afam is a graduate of Harvard University and Stanford Law School. He was recently profiled by Forbes Magazine . Source(s) Geanco, Harvard Magazine , BBC , LinkedIn

Eddie Opara is an interactive and graphic designer. Opara's dazzling multidisciplinary range combines technology-based wizardry with solid graphic chops. He is traditionally-trained graphic designer and a self-taught software developer with a perfectly tuned eye and keenly strategic mind. Born in 1972, Opara grew up in London and attended the London College of Printing. After the London College of Printing, Opara headed to Yale's graduate school of graphic design, where he received his MFA in 1997. He immediately realized that he wanted to reach beyond print design. Opara veered out into the burgeoning field of interactive design, technology and research. He worked for a company named ATG, which was populated by MIT Media Lab grads, then moved to Imaginary Forces, where he focused on electronic environments and motion graphics. He was then recruited by his former professor at Yale, Michael Rock, to work at 2x4, where Opara was finally able to bridge his print and new media pers...

Chinyere E. Oteh is a mother, educator, artist and activist. A 2007 Fellow of RAC’s Community Arts Training Institute, she is involved in several community art endeavors including teaching photography and creative writing for the PPRC Photography Project and Springboard and membership in Yeyo Arts Collective which operates Gya, a community gallery and fine craft shop. In 2007 she studied the photographic arts full-time for a year at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. She received her BA from Washington University in 2002 where she wrote an honors thesis “Mixed Race Identity: A Challenge to or an Affirmation of Racial Categorization.” Oteh strongly believes in the power of art to communicate that which we are often too afraid to speak about. Oteh is also the founder of the Cowry Collective , a time-banking network in St. Louis in which members exchange services based on time spent on a project instead of the dollar value of their work experience or professional degree. Oteh, 30...

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...