African Writers’ Day postponed due to Ebola

The Pan-African Writers Association (PAWA) has postponed the 2014 International Writers’ Day event due to the continuing efforts by ECOWAS and the international community to tackle the outbreak of Ebola disease in West Africa.

The 2014 Writers day is devoted to the life and work of the late Chinua Achebe, the grandfather of African literature.

A statement signed by Professor Atukwei Okai, PAWA General Secretary and copied to Ghana News Agency in Accra on Monday expressed appreciation to writers across the continent for their courageous role in the struggle for Africa’s development.

He also commended writers for using their novels, plays and poetry to restore confidence in the people of Africa and their images and characters to empower the people to believe in their capacity to see the world in a new light.

He said such works have given the African a fresh understanding and to bravely confront and overturn the dehumanising status quo of the centuries and contemporary decades.

Prof Okai advised parents to help their children to develop interest in reading in order to form the habit.

He said a nation that is not reading is a nation that is receding.

“The new law states that I read and therefore I am. This is because he who does not read would not know the time of the day. And this is because, he who is not aware is not awake,” he added.

He urged African governments to help revive the culture of reading in Africans by establishing libraries and stocking them with books, especially those written by African writers.

He said African governments could promote and motivate indigenous African publishers to empower them to increase their investments in the publication of new works by African writers.

Prof Okai said the event would honour the memory of late African writers including Jayne Cortez, Amiri Baraka, Sam Greenlee, Maya Angelou, Nadine Gordimer of South Africa, Kofi Awoonor of Ghana and Prof Ali Mazrui of Kenya.