Keynote Speaker
Chairperson and Leader of The Convention Peoples Party and Executive Director of The Kwame Nkrumah Pan African Centre, Ghana
(DELIVER’S THE 3rd INTERNATIONAL AFRICAN WRITERS DAY LECTURE)
“Towards Africa’s Socio-cultural Liberation”.
Samia Yaba Nkrumah, known throughout Ghana and in many parts of the world simply as Samia, is the only daughter of Ghana’s first President, the legendary Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah and his Egyptian wife, Madam Fathia Ritz. This unique circumstance of Pan-African birth and cultural inclinations underpin her belief in African unity. A belief and a political conviction that relies as much on the many texts of her father as it does on her own studies, interactions with…..Read More
Speakers
Kedumetse Motlhankane
Northwest University
“Redefining Womanhood: a critic of the re-presentation of the changing position of women in Dangarembga’s The Book of Not (2006) and Kopano Matlwa’s Coconut (2007)”
Kedumetse Motlhankane is a lecturer at the University of North-west Potchefstroom campus under the school of languages. She lecturers in the department of Academic Literacy. She holds a BA Degree in Drama from the university of Pretoria, and Honours and Masters in English from the University of North-west.
Prof Andries Oliphant
UNISA
“Tradition and Democracy: Strategies of Inclusion and Exclusion in the Post Colony”.
Andries Walter Oliphant is a literary scholar and cultural policy advisor. He chaired the Ministerial Arts and Culture Task Team and co-wrote the White Paper on Arts, Culture and Heritage. He chaired the Arts Culture Trust from 1995 to 2007.
He is co-editor of the Journal of Literary Studies and Deputy Editor of the English Academy Review. He serves on the editorial boards of Alternation: Interdisciplinary Journal of the Arts and Humanities in Southern Africa, Scrutiny 2: Issues English Studies in Southern Africa and De Arte. He is Founding Editor of Baobab: South African Journal of New Writing.
His writings on South African literature, art and photography are published locally and internationally. He is the recipient of the Thomas Pringle Award for Short Stories and the Book Journalist of the Year Award.
He was Special International Guest of the Nobel Prize Awards held in Stockholm in 1998 and a participant in the First White House Seminar on Culture and Diplomacy hosted by President Bill Clinton in 2000. He chairs the Council of Ditsong: Museums of South Africa and serves on the Council of the National English Literary Museum.
He heads the Division Theory of Literature at the University of South Africa. He is a Research Fellow at the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection, commissioned by the Department of Arts and Culture to draft a National Strategy on Social Cohesion and Nation Building.
He is serving as an adjudicator on the South African Literary Awards Adjudication Panel since 2010.
Dr Marlies Taljard
North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus
Dr Zagba Narh Oyortey 
Executive Director of the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board since 2013, Dr Zagba Oyortey is a cultural management expert with experience of delivering work in both the tangible and intangible aspects of Heritage.
Dr Oyortey has during the past 20 years worked in the private, public and non-governmental sectors, providing advice on cultural policy, producing exhibitions, festivals and managing cultural organizations. He has consulted for, among others, the British museums, the Art Council of England and the Royal Geographical Society.
Since 2004, Oyortey has been a member of the Scientific and Technical Committee of the Observatory of Cultural Policies in Africa.
