Idza Luhumyo was recently announced as the winner of the inaugural Margaret Busby New Daughters of Africa Award. The award had been launched in 2019 in conjunction with the publication of New Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby. Worth £20,000, it is offered to a black, female student ordinarily resident in Africa and covers the recipient’s tuition fees as well as accommodation costs for a Masters in African Studies, Comparative Literature, or Translation in African Languages at the School of African and Oriental Studies in London.

In a press release announcing the award, Margaret Busby said: “It is a thrill and a pleasure to be able to shine a light on the remarkable creativity of each and every writer gathered in the pages of New Daughters of Africa. They must all take credit for their part in enabling the very special legacy that is this SOAS award. This is a truly empowering moment that I hope we can build on it in a way that will be a lasting inspiration and a pointer towards what becomes possible through imaginative collaboration.”

Margaret Busby and the publisher of New Daughters of Africa, Myriad Editions, donated a proportion of their royalties and earnings from the sales of the anthology to fund the award.

Idza Luhumyo is a Kenyan screenwriter and copywriter with a law degree from the University of Nairobi. Her work, which generally explores Kenyan coastal identities, has been published in Jalada, African Arguments, and several other venues. She has previously been longlisted for the Short Story Day Africa Prize, the Miles Morland Writing Scholarship, and the Gerald Kraak Award. She will be starting her program at SOAS this coming fall.

Congratulations Idza! We’re excited for this next stage in your career and wish you all the best.