MY INVESTIGATION OF THE CLAIMS OF PHILIP EMEAGWALI:PRELIMINARY REPORT 1

Framework: Facts and Interpretations

I understand the controversy over the achievements of the Nigerian scientist Philip Emeagwali to consist of two major groups of questions.These questions  are represented by one group I understand as questions of factuality and another I understand as questions of interpretation.

Questions of factuality consist of questions as to whether or not an action took place.Questions of interpretation relate to questions as to the significance of actions established to have taken place.

The questions of factuality here  consist in

Did Philip  Emeagwali undertake any research in computing?

If he did,at what periods of his life did he do this?

What are the specific processes undergone by Emeagwali in his computing research?

What did Emeagwali achieve in the course of this research?

What use has been made of  and references made to Emeagwali's computing achievements by  industry, academia and other sources of scholarship?

Does  Emeagwali have any patents?

Questions of interpretation involve understanding of the significance of Emeagwali's achievement/s.Do they qualify him to be known as father or one of the fathers of the Internet as is often claimed for him?

My present findings have been reached purely through the use of documents on the Internet and are not significantly different from some other assessments of his work, particularly the Wikipedia essay on him which I understand as the most balanced presentation of his work  I have read so far.

I expect to come very soon to a significant degree of conclusion about more facts and move closer to conclusions on the interpretations .

Progress

I have been able to establish one fact that it is already well known.I have been able to establish to the best of my ability another fact that was not so well known.

I am investigating a third claim in the hope of  arriving  at a factual understanding.

I am still investigating  the conclusions drawn by Emeagwali and his supporters from the well known fact I have established.

Structure

I have organised my progress so far in terms of

1.Facts

1a.The Gordon Bell Prize

     Sources

      1991    University of Michigan newspaper

      Links at the IEEE, International Society     of Electrical and Electronics Engineers 

      Wikipedia Copy of the Report of the 1989 Gordon Bell Prize

       Microsoft Microsoft  Historical  Essay 

1b.Patents

Links

1991 University  of Michigan newspaper[Linked.Not attached]

Microsoft  Historical  Essay 

 Links at the IEEE, International Society     of Electrical and Electronics Engineers 

Attachments

Wikipedia Copy of the Report of the 1989 Gordon Bell Prize

IEEE magazine with Emeagwali’s picture

Facts

The Gordon Bell Prize for 1989

I have established the well known fact that Philip Emeagwali won the Gordon Bell Prize for computing in 1989. From what I have understood of this so far,Emeagwali  was awarded this prize  for his achievement in a  computation that  performed  a massive number of calculations  that facilitated complex problems in prospecting for oil. This is a somewhat crude method of describing what the document that is almost certainly the report of the 1989  Gordon Bell Prize describes as a very creative and subtle approach to a complex problem in oil prospecting.

Sources

1991 University of Michigan newspaper  

The evidence I have for this conclusion about his winning the price and the work he did to win it comes from a report on his work in a University of Michigan newspaper in 1991  at the archives of the university, where he was a graduate student when he won the prize in 1989 .I have tried to find my own  sources for the claims I am  investigating but could not find any  other that supported the Gordon Bell Prize win.

Links at the IEEE, International Society of Electrical and Electronics Engineers 

The links that refer to the 1989 Godon Bell prize  at the site of the International Society of Electrical and Electronics Engineers proved impossible to open.What I could see of their contents, however, support the claim about the win and the content of the research that enabled that win: "for his work on oil-reservoir simulation".

Wikipedia  Copy of the Report of the 1989 Gordon Bell Prize by the Judges of the Prize, Almost Certainly from  IEEE

This  the documents and summation of his work at the Wikipedia entry on Emeagwali  one of which is document described as the report of the 1989 Gordon Bell Prize by the judges of the prize corroborate the reports of his having won the prize.A detailed description of the challenges he addressed,the methods he used and the work of the other thee groups  of leading contests are discussed in detail.

The URL of the Wikipedia copy of the report,when opened in a browser, bears the IEEE logo,giving it some credibility.I will decide whether or not to investigate the authenticity of the report.

I have tried to get a copy of this document from the site of the journal using an institutional account but the article is not present when I get to the site.

Links to the article on the IEEE site,however,list the article as present in that journal.

Microsoft  Historical Essay

Having searched the information technology companies best known to me,being Apple,Microsoft,Sun Microsystems,Google  and IBM, I found one reference to his name,from Microsoft, the essay "Crabby Celebrates Black History Month" which substantiates the claim that Emeagwali  won the prize.

Problems with the Microsoft  Historical Essay

 The Microsoft historical essay  makes some claims that seem to contradict other accounts of Emeagwali’s work. It also makes assertions of the impact of the work that require close  investigation to verify since they seem to contradict the virtual blackout on Emeagwali’s name in industry and academic sources.

The report’s complete credibility is   also suspect to me because it does not seem to  be a statement demonstrating company recognition of a contributor in a field to which the company owes its existence but a recognition of Black achievers in science for the sake of Black history month, laudable as that is, up to a point.

The only sources referred to are journalistic sources and not even specialized science journalism,former US President Bill Clinton and an interview of Emeagwali. There is no scientist quoted or referred to nor is there any statement from Microsoft describing the impact of Emeagwali's  work on the systems used by the company or any others in the industry.

Patents

I have not been able to find any evidence that Philip Emeagwali has any patents.This corresponds to the findings of other investigators, who like me,have searched the records of the US Patent office for his name without success.

Interpretation of the Significance of the Emeagwali's Achievement that Won the 1989 Gordon Bell Prize

One person, a graduate student,   winning against  two teams   of professional scientists  from three  research facilities  and another team of two researchers

It is important to note that in the report on the 1989 Gordon Bell prize Emeagwali is described as measured against  three  teams while he is described as working alone. The  team that also won a prize,but in  in another category,was composed of eight scientists  from two scientific establishments. Even though they are described as achieving a computation at a  faster speed than Emeagwali. That, to me is offset by the fact he was one person, and a graduate student, against  eight industry professionals.

The other teams Emeagwali  superseded   to collect the prize were a team of three researchers from the University of Texas and another team of two researchers from Brown University and the Institute for Defense Analyses Supercomputing Research Centre.

The Wikipedia  Copy of the Report of the 1989 Gordon Bell Prize states:

"In the performance category we awarded the prize to a team from Mobil Research and Development and Thinking Machines Corp. The team members are Mark Bromley,Harold Huschman,Alan Edelamn,Bob Lordi,Jacek Myczkowski,and Alex Valievsky of TMC and Doung McCowan and Irshad Mufti of Mobil Resreach.

Their solution of a seismic data-processing problem ran at almost 6 flops on a CM-2 Connection Machine. Not only does this computation rate exceed that of last year’s winner by six times, it is almost twice the peak speed of the Cray Y-MP/8!

 We awarded the price/performance prize to Philip Emeagwali of the Civil Engineering Department and Scientific Computing Program at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.He also used a CM-2 to solve an oil-reservoir-modelling problem.His model ran at a price/performance of slightly less than 400 Mflops per $1 million. While the Mobil/TMC team achieved almost 500 Mflops per $1 million,we decided to award only one prize per entry."

 Creative and computational power in creating a solution  to a complex problem in oil prospecting using the CM-2

Foundational to this achievement is the programming of the complex CM-2 in relation to simulating oil reservoirs to develop more cost effective and efficient methods of extracting oil. The report describes in sublime technical prose the mathematical work required to achieve this using the method Emeagwali employed:

"Reservoir-modelling equations are extremely challenging. The simulations must follow many constituents, like water, methane,and liquid hydrocarbons; the equations are highly nonlinear, resulting in steep discontinuities in the solution; the underlying geometry is complicated by irregularities in the rock’s boundaries and flow properties; and realistic results normally require following the flow in   three dimensions".

To be continued

ON TOYIN FALOLA

 A RESPONSE TO THE ANNOUNCEMENT BELOW THIS POST

Superb.

According to one historian,Toyin Falola, singlehanded, has achieved more than the combined publication efforts  of the first generation of African historians.He is also the author of two works of poetry,one of which is a large,lush hardback volume. He has also edited  seven  scholarly texts on aspects of African literature and one on an aspect of African art.His editing credits include two books on African health systems and five on religion in Africa.

Please forgive any mistakes in this list because reading through the description of  his list of books is quite  a task.It  is work of the kind that requires one or two hours of uninterrupted attention.

On doing a Google search for his name I see that he has just been awarded the 2010 Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award at the University of Texas  "established in 1976 to honor faculty members for outstanding teaching at the graduate level and mentoring of graduate students"

Awesome.

In 2004, I first came across his name when I kept seeing it as the author or editor  of various books at the library of the School of Oriental and African Studies.If there are so many books to his name,then I wonder how many scholarly articles there are.I see that on his website he does not bother to list his articles.He lists his books year by year,beginning from 1983.This shows that from 1985 he began to publish  at least two books a year.

I had to ask a lecturer at that university,"Who is this man?"  We both had to express our sense of speechless admiration at this kind of prolific writing and publishing.

One looks at people like that from a distance,the way one looks at the pyramid of Khefra in the sands of Egypt.

How was it built? Through slave labour? How did the builders arrive at this level of engineering, particularly startling beceause  as far as I know,there are no written records of this level of knowledge  having been reached  until centuries later?

The pyramids of Egypt are now described as most likely not built with slave labour.

Scholarship requires a lot of painstaking work.Keeping in mind that Falola is likely to have started publishing perhaps before the days of ease of writing with computers.

How do people achieve such productivity? How do they manage their time?How do they generate ideas?What are their motivations? How do such people address other aspects of their lives,both personal and professional?

Are  the limitations on human productivity necessitated by time  and the  strictures of the human mind and body not absolute?

Are they not universally applicable to everybody? Are they applicable to everyone in the same manner?

All humans have one brain,two hands and two eyes.Everybody supposedly operates in terms of a 24 hour day.Everybody must undergo cognitive development from one stage of life to another,from one day to another.One cannot amass knowledge all at once, although one could experience unusual spurts of cognitive growth.Creativity also undergoes a feeding and a gestative process,as well as a process of expression,all of which takes time.These factors create limitations for the human being,particularly in relation to creativity.

I suspect,however,that human creativity might be less dependent on these factors than on a transformative  capacity of the mind that facilitates the maximization of  creative faculties, enabling one to transcend these limitations.

Magicians,mystics and writers of fantasy and  science fiction mention the possibility of manipulating time.Within such manipulations one achieves more than expected because one operates in a time frame that is much slower than the conventional passing of time.In such a context,one can spend time developing and communicating ideas while little or no time at all has passed to conventional awareness.

I suspect such seeming manipulations are possible.

I suspect that they are enabled by a number of factors.One set of these factors is individual,personal,while another is environmental,both human and material.

While taking note of the value of formative developments in childhood,youth and early adulthood,when the character of the personality is being formed,one could argue for a number of personal factors.

One of these could be a sensitivity to one's own creative stimuli, those factors that stimulate one's creativity.

One also needs to be at home with oneself,understanding those subtle whispers  that signal the emergence of new ideas.It would also be priceless to continuously  cultivate a  large  and ever expanding fund of knowledge,either in a specific field,in various fields,or in  a focus on one field,while making oneself   as informed as possible about  connections from other fields to this  central field.Such cross-connections facilitate the development of novel perspectives by enabling one to integrate ideas and methods from various fields of knowledge and modes  of exploration and expression.

Environment.A nurturing environment,inspirational,positively challenging,is deal.But such an ideal is not always   a reality.People at times have to use the environment in creative ways if it is  to function as an inspirational matrix for  them.

Would Falola  have  achieved so much  he had remained in Nigeria where  he got his PhD? Its clear he has always been driven to publish and to publish books,as evident from his book publications from 1983,shortly after his PhD in 1981.His production of books accelerated in 1985 to the level of two books a year.What  motivated that sharp jump? What   factors  enabled him to sustain that pace?

I also see that a significant part of his productivity is stimulated by the social context of scholarship,specifically conferences and co-writers and editors.Its clear that his  creativity oscillates between  individual  gestation and production and the stimuli of social contexts and relationships.

It would be helpful to have a biography from such a person so that one can understand the psychological and intellectual motions and practical initiatives  that have given birth to this kind of achievement.I see that he has one memoir A Mouth Sweeter Than Salt:An African Memoir described as having gained this list of distinctions: "Finalist: The Association of African Studies 2005 Melville J. Herskovits Award;Finalist: The Association of Third World Studies (ATWS) 2005 Cecil B. Curry Award;Winner: 2004 Association of Third World Studies (ATWS) President's Distinguished Leadership and Scholarship Award;Winner: West African Oral History Association's E.J. Alagoa Prize for the best book for 2003-2004;Runner-up: 9th Robert Hamilton Book Awards, University of Texas, Austin".

This memoir will be certainly intriguing to read and will form part of a Toyin Falola library,a section of one's library where one can follow the development of the work of a modern disciple of the North African Berber  Ibn Khaldun,who,in the Maqqadimah,created what  is described as the first work of global history,along with being a forerunner of the social sciences in general,anticipating a good number of  its  disciplines centuries before their Western formulation, a disciple of   the Greek  Thucydides,described as the father of  history study and  writing  in the modern sense .

Announcing the Toyin Falola Annual International Conference on Africa and the African Diaspora

from Vik Bahl reply-to usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com to USAAfrica date 23 September 2010 20:17 subject USA Africa Dialogue Series - Announcing the Toyin Falola Annual International Conference on Africa and the African Diaspora mailing list Filter messages from this mailing list mailed-by googlegroups.com Signed by googlegroups.com unsubscribe Unsubscribe from this mailing list

hide details 20:17 (17 hours ago)

Ibadan Cultural Studies Group, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria

Announces

The Toyin Falola Annual International Conference on Africa and the African Diaspora

www.ibadanculturalstudiesgroup.org/toyinfalolaconference

In pursuance of its mandate which includes the promotion of excellence in cultural studies, the Ibadan Cultural Studies Group, Faculty of Arts, University of Ibadan, Nigeria, in collaboration with many African universities, is pleased to announce The Toyin Falola Annual International Conference on Africa and the African Diaspora. This conference will provide an international forum where scholars, researchers, graduate students, policy makers, and technocrats from all over the world will converge annually to address issues that relate to Africa and the Diaspora in the strict academic tradition, in order to extend the frontier of knowledge, explore possible collaboration on matters of knowledge and development, culture and global peace.  The conference will provide a global forum designed to engage minds for ideation, intellection and distillation in various aspects of knowledge to advance the cause of Africa and people of African descent.

The conference is so named as an enduring legacy in honour of Professor Toyin Falola of the University of Texas at Austin, USA, in recognition of his tremendous achievements as a scholar and teacher of African and African American History. Dr. Toyin Falola is the Frances Higginbotham Nalle Centennial Professor and Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, a creative writer, a foremost academic icon and certainly, and now the most celebrated published African/Black scholar of all times. In late March 2010, the publication of his 100^th book received an acclaim. Two books were presented at the event to mark the great occasion, The Long Arm of Africa: The Prodigious Career of Toyin Falola (180pp), which contains the summary of each of Dr. Falola’s 100+ published books co-edited by Vik Bahl and Falola’s daughter, Bisola, and Toyin Falola: the Man, The Mask, The Muse, a 1015pp bio-critical study edited by Professor Niyi Afolabi.  On Saturday evening of October 31, 2009, Dr. Falola was presented with the prestigious Africana Studies Distinguished Global Scholar Lifetime Achievement Award by Chancellor Charles Bantz of Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis at the Awards Dinner for the 1st Public Scholars in Africana Studies International Conference on Globalization held in Indianapolis.   The organizers of the Award had this to say on the selection of Dr. Falola for this significant award: 

The presentation of the Africana Studies Distinguished Global Scholar Lifetime Achievement Award represents our best efforts to recognize an individual who can more accurately be described as the "quintessential ‘scholar's scholar,’" i.e., a person whose lifetime has been exemplified by the relentless search for knowledge in all of its various facets and whose total body of scholarship through the years has been considered by his/her peers to be of the highest level of excellence. We wanted to recognize a scholar who has developed a stellar global reputation because of the significant impacts his/her scholarship has had on the global academy and who has used his/her platform unselfishly to elevate others, particularly  students, professional colleagues, and members of the public at large. We also wanted to recognize a scholar whose academic research has had transformative effects on the various global epistemological debates which have preoccupied scholars in his/her disciplinary area of focus through the years and whose work has provided an important platform for the development of an ongoing critical discourse with regard to the continuing relevancy of understanding and respecting African people, cultures, and ideologies, both in the past and contemporary time periods ... The academic world has run out of superlatives to describe the magnificent body of scholarship produced through the years by the indefatigable, Dr. Toyin Falola.

The above statement summarizes it all- the person and personality as a great mentor, coupled with his unparalleled academic achievements in the humanities foreground our choice of Dr Toyin Falola. An annual conference is the least we can put in place to sustain and ensure the continuity of what Professor Toyin Falola’s stands for— the promotion of excellence in Africa and the Diaspora scholarship.

Professor Ademola Dasylva

Co-coordinator, ICSG

KUNLE OLUKOTUN: OGUN AT STANFORD,AFARA AT SILICON VALLEY

Kunle Olukotun,a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Stanford and director of  the Stanford Pervasive Parallelism Lab, who also has a significant record in terms of innovation and the  development of his innovation in collaboration with industry.He  co-founded Afara Web Systems,  which was later acquired by Sun Microsystems  because Afara,Yoruba for "bridge",had problems gaining venture capital following negative financial sector developments in the US after 9/11.

Sun's acquisition of Afara is described as central to its efforts to reposition itself in its core market of microprocessor development.A core attraction for Sun was the Niagara microprocessor and system design,the history of which describes it as emerging from Olukotun's Hydra research project which later led him to seek venture capital funding to develop it.Olukotun's role in Niagara is also highlighted in this paper on innovation from Sun Microcystems.

Olukotun's academic papers  are evident on his university page and through his   100 papers  at the Scientific Commons. spanning 1993 to 2010.

You may read excerpts on Amazon from Olukotun's co-authored Multicore Processes and Systems. You can also read online Kunle Olukotun and Lance Hammond's paper "The Future of Microprocessors" .

The vision of the Stanford Pervasive Parallelism Lab is described at that link by Olukotun and his fellow researchers and by this information industry report which describes industry and scientists  collaborating  at the lab to create breakthroughs in the field   while Olukotun gives this  overview of pervasive parallelism at a computing conference.

On Mar 17, 2006, at 8:30 PM, toyin adepoju wrote:

Dear Prof.Olukotun,
Good morning.
I found your biographical profile which was in an email I got from  PARC announcing your forthcoming lecture most inspiring.  I am student of comparative literature who has an interest in the  sciences.

I am intrigued by the presence of the name ogun in your email [kunle@ogun.stanford.edu] and  your Stanford URL[http://ogun.stanford.edu/~kunle/] .May I ask if the use of that name in those  contexts  has any relationship to the Yoruba deity?Possibly a symbolic  relationship?

Thanks.
Toyin


"Kunle Olukotun" <kunle@cslmail.stanford.edu>      Re:
hello and enquiry
Date:    Mon, 20 Mar 2006 00:11:55 -0800
To:    "toyin adepoju" <tokem3000@yahoo.com>


As you know Ogun is the Yoruba god of iron and steel, invoked by all  whose occupations rely on iron.  Computer servers are
sometimes called  "big iron", so my server's name is "Ogun"

Kunle

For Professor Olokotun's Stanford page go to

http://ogun.stanford.edu/~kunle/

THE UNIVERSITY AS AN INCUBATOR OF VISION,OF REGIONAL, NATIONAL AND GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT:THE STORY OF FRED TERMAN, STANFORD UNIVERSITY AND SILICON VALLEY IN CONTRAST WITH OTHER APPROACHES TO A UNIVERSITY

Have you heard of a place called Silicon Valley?

The name is sheer music.It is a place where dreams come true.It is the iconic global centre of the marriage of technology,business and science,having perhaps the world's highest concentration of companies and research centres devoted to the development,application,manufacturing and marketing of the most sophisticated technologies.

The Valley began as an initiative by Fred Terman who inspired graduates of nearby Stanford University,where he taught and eventually became Vice-Provost, to set up companies in the Valley,along with  making his university a research hub that fed the growing synergy of technology  and business the Valley began to represent.This initiative has been fundamental  to making the Valley,the university and California one of the most innovative places on earth,within which a staggering amount of wealth is generated,being central to the gargantuan economy of the United States.

It was with this kind of example in mind,in relation to similar but less prominent examples in different parts of the world,of the transformative effect a university can have on its immediate and larger national and global environment,that as a former BA,MA and PhD student,and lecturer at the University of Benin in Nigeria,I struggled to point out last year on Nigerian centred fora what I consider one of the most ridiculous ideas I have ever come across,the determination to make sure a person of a particular ethnic group becomes Vice-Chancellor of a university,as represented by the resolve of some vocal Bini people that a Bini person must become Vice-Chancellor of the University of Benin,arguing that no Bini person has ever been Vice-Chancellor on account of intrigues against that ethnic group.

I argued that the best thing to do is to insist on due process in the exercise and avoid the ethnic card because it would create polarisations that could cripple or further erode the university's  value.This would compound   the negative effects suffered by Nigerian universities through decades of travail. I had  read,however, that the University of Benin had gained significant momentum in being highly  regarded in the West African sub-region.

I was vilified for my efforts by a significant number of Bini people on these fora who have since insisted on seeing me as an enemy.Their anger was stoked by the fact that my name makes me look as if I am Yoruba, suggesting to them that I was being hypocritical in not condemning similar manoeuvres in universities in Yoruba states along with the federal character allocation policy of the Nigerian government.My response was that "Does one follow the directions of a blind person?" The Nigerian state and those universities mentioned are not places that can be described as particularly palatable constructions.My explanation that I feel particularly attached to Benin and the university because of the many formative years I spent there was ridiculed.

Some Bini people,however, showed they appreciated my perspective. 

Meanwhile the Oba of Benin weighed in on behalf of the idea of appointing a Bini Vice-Chancellor and the state governor chipped in his support.

Spiritual weapons were also prominently employed,with a ritual object being placed at the university gate to ensure a curse against any Vice-Chancellor who was appointed against the will of the Bini people.

Eventually a Bini professor was made Vice-Chancellor.

I have nothing against the man who eventually became Vice-Chancellor, but,as far as I know,there is no way you will build a first or even a  second class institution or university with such methods as used by those who agitated in the process that eventually led to his appointment.

The last I heard was that the medical students of the university were holding a public demonstration  over the non-accreditation of the university's    medical programme.As I write this,it almost brings tears to my eyes.When I studied there,the medical school was understood as the acme of academic rigour,its students the creme de la creme of intelligence and the essence of scholarship.How could this sorry pass have befallen them? How will they recover from this tragedy? How long will it take the medical school to recover its reputation?

As the story of Fred Terman,Stanford and Silicon Valley demonstrate,anybody who is concerned for the glory of their geographical locality needs to think of how to attract interest to those localities through the provision of needs that draw people.In such considerations, ability above all and not ethnicity are central.Nigerians,have worked as Vice-Chancellors and Chief Judge in other African countries who had the vision to get the best from anywhere.Without the determined input of Susan Wenger, the Austrian who lived in Osgogbo from the 50s until recently,I doubt if the cultural and tourist centre that the Osun Forest has become would have been achieved,not to talk of the cultural effloresce of Osogbo through in  which the efforts  of Wenger and her then husband Ulli Beier played a central role.

Instead of such destructive distractions as seeking for ethnically centred academic  appointments,ethnic minded people need to work out,to suggest one approach, how to make their ethnic  geographical  locations centres of research.Any village,town or city anywhere in the world that can build a research centre,even in the low technology disciplines of the humanities,provide constant power even if though solar power,some comfort and a library,provide grants that will sustain even one scholar  living there for periods of time,  provide security,adversing globally for such scholars, will gradually put itself on  the global map.

With time such structures can be expanded and over the years,the surrounding  society would experience the spillover from  such an initiative.

Even such modest beginnings seem to me a more valid method of bringing glory one's ethnic location.

I urge you to read the story of Fred Terman at this link.It is unforgettable:Fred Terman, The Father of Silicon Valley

 

CELEBRATION OF A MASTER OF WORDS AND IDEAS: PIUS ADESANMI AND THE INAUGURAL PENGUIN PRIZE FOR AFRICAN WRITING

Congrats to poet,scholar and literary promoter Pius Adesanmi on the splendid achievement of winning the inaugural award of the Penguin Prize for African Writing in the non-fiction category for his book manuscript titled You're not a Country,Africa: A Personal History of the African Present.

The progression of Adesanmi's pictures in this essay,from his younger to his more mature years, is chosen to suggest,through his physical changes,the developments of consciousness represented by his prize winning manuscript.

Pius Adesanmi is a very engaging   writer the power of whose work comes from his being able to interpret every day experience and historical contexts  with an  alert mind sharpened by  insights derived from the theoretical frames of  literary and cultural theory,along with a mellifluous style,made even more distinctive by the integration of expressions from his native Yoruba and at times pidgin English,if I remember well.A relatively recent essay of his that comes most readily to mind now is the one  inspired by his seeing an old woman at a bank, titled  "Oju loro wa",a Yoruba expression he translates as  "The face is the abode of discourse",in which   the Yoruba expression becomes a  springboard for reflection on differences  and similarities between Western and Yoruba contexts in the framework of the social tranformations created by Western modernity.Another recent memorable essay of his is the one on  the dislocation his self perception as a Nigerian undergoes through contact with a  Francophone country in which  his identification with the then official description  of his country Nigeria,the most populous African nation and one of the world's top suppliers of oil, as the "Giant of Africa", receives a very sobering shock.

I expect the manuscript that won the prize  handles skilfully a subject he often develops with a customary sense of creative tension,a kaleidoscope presentation of an African's developing self perception as an individual and a child of that continent,as this self perception emerges and undergoes change through the impact of the writer's experiences  as he traverses various countries within and outside Africa.

The title also suggests the reductive description of Africa as a country that emerges from time with time with some  Euro-Americans whose knowledge of the continent is made up of a black hole in which whatever solidity is present is made up of often unreal images.In that light it suggest an effort to combat such reductive conceptions as a cosmopolitan African most of whose study and work has been in the West.On the other hand,could the title of the work suggest the multifarious character of the continents identity/ies? Identities that suggest the vast difference between a country and a continent? 

The introduction to the manuscript describes it as an effort to make meaning of the question "What is Africa to me" a question that,in Adesanmi's  words, "stands unanswered at the  idealogical core of Pan-Africanism,Negritude,nationalism,decolonisation,and all the other projects through which Africans sought to restore their violated humanity".

He describes the work as an exploration of the subject through the lens of his personal experience as he traverses various countries,from his rural upbringing in his hometown Isanlu,to  various linguistic zones of the continent,and to the West.Travel,both literal and metaphorical is at the core of the book.The mercurial character of journeying is also at the core of the tension between ideational definitiveness and fluidity in terms of which the writer describes himself as actualising his understanding of the continent and of himself as a child of that continent,a tension  summed up for him  in the poetry of Abioseh Nichol: "...Africa [is] a concept fashioned in our minds,each to each,to hide our separate fears,to dream our separate dreams".

Having traversed the continent in its physical and social manifestations, as well as through  its mental embedding in the perspectives of others across the world,he comes to focus on his country, Nigeria,the most populous and one  of the more challenged countries on the continent.The personal, the social,the economic and the political are among the issues he engages  with in the examination of the experience of this country.

I  look forward to some very stimulating reading when Penguin publishes the book.

A description of Adesanmi as a poet  whose "The Wayfarer and Other Poems

 won the Association of Nigerian Authors in 2001"is here at African Writing Online.

His statement of scholarly research interests is at his Carleton University page 

where he is Associate Professor, Dept. of English Language & Literature

where he describes himself as " [specializing] in the literatures and 

cultures of Africa and the Black Diaspora from a comparative 

Anglophone/francophone viewpoint. My research focuses on the modalities

 of contemporary African knowledge production and how those knowledges 

are inflected by local and transnational issues in the age of globalization.

 Taking literature and its criticism, along with film, music, and other 

popular cultural productions as points of departure, I examine how the 

postcolonial texts of Africa in particular, and the Black world in general, self-fashion 

as delegitimations of Western epistemic formations."

He is also the founder and director of PONAL-Project on  New African Literatures

"a major online audio-visual resource project archiving and presenting 

new writing from Africa to an international audience" [Presenting]

 exciting new and emergent African literatures, especially

 those trapped within the ideological, political, economic, 

and institutional contexts of the Postcolony, and excluded 

by the canonising mechanisms of the metropolitan academy.

Apart from facilitating critical conversations, we will disseminate, 

archive, and comment on the works of well-known, emergent and

 relatively unknown but equally engaging writers of the third generation 

from the entire continent.