The Caine Prize for African Writing is one of the most coveted awards for any African literary writer because it celebrates some of the best stories published by African writers in the past year. First awarded in 2000 to Sudanese writer Leila Aboulela, the prize has so far been awarded to 25 African writers across different regions.
The 2026 shortlist has been announced, and Nigerian Akinwande Jordan is one of the five African writers shortlisted this year. Akinwande is shortlisted for his story, So Long It’s Starting To Look Like Eternity, published by Naira Books.
Bola Mosuro, the Chair of Judges for the 2026 Caine Prize for African Writing, said, “These five shortlisted stories stood out with their originality. Each author packed a powerful punch in their storytelling with tales that were poignant, shocking, moving and even quirky. Congratulations to them all.”
See the 2026 shortlist below:
Akinwande Jordan (Nigeria), for So Long It’s Starting To Look Like Eternity
Akinwande Remilekun Jordan is a Nigerian writer, critic, and editor whose work moves between cinema, literature, culture, and politics. His writing is preoccupied with the ways art reflects and contests the social worlds that produce it, with particular attention to African cinema, popular culture, gender, power, and the uneasy relationship between aesthetics and ideology.
His criticism and essays have appeared in The 49th Street Magazine, What Kept Me Up, Saharan Style, Screen in Transit, and Black Film Wire, where he works as a writer and editor. He has written on Nigerian and African cinema, contemporary culture, feminism, and the politics of representation, while his broader literary work includes fiction and poetry. He lives and writes in Nigeria.
Gladwell Pamba is a PhD student at Concordia University Canada, where she also holds an MA in Creative Writing. She was the winner of the Ibua Manuscript Prize in 2024 and Malahat Review’s Far Horizons Award for Short Fiction in 2025. She has previously been awarded fellowships including the Oxbelly Writers Retreat, International Literary Seminars and The African Writers’ Trust. Gladwell’s works are anthologised, while others appear in Iskanchi Press, Bakwa, North West Review, Waxwing Journal, The Offing, The Rumpus and elsewhere. She is currently working on a novel and a collection of short stories.
Melara Mvogdobo (Cameroon), for Dieu Merci
Melara Mvogdobo was born in Lucerne in 1972. After studying education and giving birth to three sons, she lived in the Dominican Republic, Cameroon and back in Switzerland. In addition to her writing, she taught traumatised young people and led workshops on textile handicrafts and tropical cuisine. In 2022, she moved to Andalusia with her family. In 2023, her first novel “Von den fünf Schwestern, die auszogen, ihren Vater zu ermorden” (Edition 8, Zürich) was published. Her second novel, “Grandmothers”, was nominated for the Swiss Book Prize 2025 and was published in German in 2025 by Transit Verlag.
Yasmine Zohdi (Egypt), for The Absence of Stains
Yasmine Zohdi is a writer, translator and film critic based in Cairo, Egypt. She holds an MFA in Fiction Writing from Sarah Lawrence College, New York. A former culture editor at the independent news website Mada Masr and an alumna of Berlinale Talent Press, Zohdi is interested in the intersections between literary and cinematic forms, and how they continue to inform one another. She was an inaugural fellow of the Fiction Writers’ Program at the 2023 Oxbelly Retreat. Her work has appeared in Words Without Borders, Asymptote, Bidoun, ArabLit and The Republic, among others. She is currently working on her first novel.
Simbarashe Kundizeza (Zimbabwe), for The Blue Fighter
Simbarashe Steyn Kundizeza is a Zimbabwean writer based in Harare. His debut novel manuscript, Freelance, won the 2024 Island Prize for Debut African Fiction. He is an alumnus of the 2025 LOATAD Black Atlantic Residency and a finalist in the 2018 Africa Book Club Short Story Competition. His work has appeared in Transition Magazine (Issue 131), The Wrong Patient and Other Stories from Africa anthology, and The Shallow Tales Review. He currently serves as an Associate Editor at African Writer Magazine.
Read all the shortlisted stories here.
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All photos culled from the Caine Prize for African Writing website.
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