BY TheCable
On Wednesday March 9, Nigerian travel journalist Pelu Awofeso will join scholars, photographers and writers from Africa and Europe for the first-ever African Travel Writing Encounters, organised by the University of Birmingham’s Department of African Studies and Anthropology.
The workshop will feature daylong panel discussions on many aspects of travelling and travel writing on the African continent by Africans over the centuries, including topics such as Samuel Crowther’s travel writings and expeditions to the Niger; Journeys through scenic Nigeria, past and present; Moroccan Ambassadorial travel writers in the 19th century; and Algeria compulsory travel writing in the first world war, among others.
The conference will also examine how African writers document their diaspora experiences abroad.
“African travel writers have traversed both the African continent and the rest of the world, writing about encounters and differences they meet in their own societies and others,” read a statement released by the organisers on Africa In Words website.
“They have engaged with colonialism and the post-colonial world, have produced ethnographic description, reportage, poetry, humour and more.
“They have traversed genres and forms, from the Swahili habari written at the turn of the twentieth century to Yoruba newspaper travel narratives of the 1920s, from accounts of students and soldiers abroad, to newspapers and today’s online travel writing.”
Awofeso presenting copies of his books to Lai Mohammed, minister of information and culture, at the recent Social media Week in Lagos
Invited guests and panelists include Kwame Osei-Poku, Stephanie De Goeijen, Neema Ghenim, Hamza Salih, Aedin Ní Loingsigh, Humphrey Nkonde, Janet Remmington, Alexsander Gebara, and Lola Akinmade Åkerström.
Rebecca Jones, research fellow at the university and convener of the workshop, said she had been researching Nigerian travel writing for several years now and she wanted to hear more from other researchers and writers interested in travel writing by African writers.
“For many years, the focus among scholars of travel writing has been on travel writing about Africa by Western authors,” she said. “But now we need to hear more about the stories Africans are telling about their own countries, other countries across the African continent and beyond.”
Jones was inspired by Awofeso’s work and that of a number of other African and diaspora travel writers to create a forum where “we could discuss the past, present and futures of African travel writing” and hopes that this workshop “will be the first in series of workshops where we can get African travel writers and scholars together to talk about travel writing”.
“I am honoured to be invited to speak at this meeting of travel writers and scholars,” said Awofeso, a winner of the CNN/Multichoice African Journalists Awards in tourism reporting who constantly travels around Nigeria and has published three travel books about his journeys to 32 of the country’s 36 states.
“If anything, it shows how highly regarded travel writing in Nigeria is abroad.”
African Travel Writing Encounters is hosted in collaboration with the ‘Knowing Each Other’ project, a European Research Council-funded project which explores everyday encounters between Muslims, Christians and traditional worshippers in southwestern Nigeria.
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