It’s 2118 and you’ve arrived in Lagos for a book festival. When you step out of the airport, what is the first thing you see?<\/b><\/p>\n
I sincerely hope that the sight will be a lot better than what I currently see. I hope I can see well paved roads, with a tramline running on both sides, organised roadsides, and decent looking structures, well-kept and orderly. I hope to see order and not chaos!<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n You’ve been selected for a mission to the moon. Which African author are you taking and why?<\/b><\/p>\n Sefi Atta and Chika Unigwe. There is just something about the way they write that gets me!<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n What invention do you think would change the lives of Africans today?<\/b><\/p>\n It\u2019s not an invention that we need, but if we will call it that, it will be nationalistic minded good government. Oh, as per invention, well, electricity still looks like something that does not exist in most parts of Africa. So, if someone would please invent a cheap, quick to deploy sustainable source of electricity for Africa, then we would be on way to modernisation!<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Two things you\u2019re doing when not reading or writing?<\/b><\/p>\n Listening to music and watching football, mostly.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n To what extent has African literature envisioned an African future?<\/b><\/p>\n To my mind, African literature up to the 80s still showed a lot of colonialist Africa with a bit of culture and a lot of nationalism. It showed the African journey from a grossly undeveloped people and continent to a new class of educated people and developing continent. However, today, Africa is only a location in the minds of the African writer, as most novels dwell on personality rather than the setting. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n What book do you think best captures Afrofuturism?<\/b><\/p>\n What\u2019s that? Just joking. I don\u2019t think I really have read anything that sincerely does justice to that concept as defined originally by Mark Dery (himself a white man). I think the concept of Afrofuturism by definition is an oxymoron. Science or Science Fiction is not traditionally the focus of most African writing. Our history is almost all rubbed off the pages of any books right now, and the continent, more than ever, is a bit lost and torn between who we are and who we should be. Perhaps a better way to capture Afrofuturism will be to embark on the capture, and to consciously document our history by ourselves.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n You wake up one morning to find that you’ve grown a pair<\/b>\u00a0of wings. What do you do?<\/b><\/p>\n