Africa! Africa! Africa! Africa my motherland! Africa, your people cries for you! Africans must educate their citizens. Africans must reach out to its people and empower them to build the nation. Africans you are the only people who can liberate your citizens from poverty through education. Africans must pay the price to rebuild the continent.

— Lailah Gifty Akita

Africa PRODUCES what it does NOT CONSUME and CONSUMES what it does NOT PRODUCE.

— Ali A. Mazrui

Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten.

— Chinua Achebe

And so the spirits just gazed at us with eyes milked dry of care.

— NoViolet Bulawayo

A PhD is not the end of education. Education exists even among the bees who feed their queen only with the purest

— Sahndra Fon Dufe

But how wonderful when the tale is told, And the message that is meant for us Opens like the scents of a mountain flower!

— Mazisi Kunene

Does rough weather choose men over women? Does the sun beat on men, leaving women nice and cool?' Niagara asked rather sharply. 'Women bear the brunt of poverty. What choices does a woman have in life, especially in times of misery? She can marry or live with a man. She can bear children and bring them up, and be abused by her man. Have you read Bu chi Machete of Nigeria, Joys of Motherhood? Sits Dangarembga of Zimbabwe, say, Nervous Conditions? Miriam Ba of Senegal, So Long A Letter? Three women from different parts of Africa, giving words to similar thoughts about the condition of women in Africa.'' I am not much of a reader of fiction,' Haiti said. 'Especially novels by African women. In India such books are hard to find.'' Surely even in India there are women writers? Indian women writers?' Niagara pressed. 'Arundhati Roy, for instance, The God of Small Things? Deena Alexander, Fault Lines? Susie Their. Read Women Writing in India. Or her other book, We Were Making History, about women in the struggle!'' I have sampled the epics of Indian literature,' Haiti said, trying to redeem himself. 'Mahabharata, Ramayana, and mostly Bhagavad Gita. There are a few others, what they call Purana, Rig-Veda, Upanishads … Not that I read everything, but …'' I am sure that those epics and Purana's, even the Rita, were all written by men,' Niagara said. 'The same men who invented the caste system. When will you learn to listen to the voices of women?

— Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

I have been told many times by family, friends, colleagues and strangers that I, a black African Muslim lesbian, am not included in this vision; that my dreams are a reflection of my upbringing in a decadent, amoral Western society that has corrupted who I really am. But who am I, really? Am I allowed to speak for myself or must my desires form the battleground for causes I do not care about? My answer to that is simple: ‘no one allows anyone anything.’ By rejecting that notion you discover that only you can give yourself permission on how to lead your life, naysayers be damned. In the end something gives way. The earth doesn’t move but something shifts. That shift is change and change is the layman’s lingo for that elusive state that lovers, dreamers, prophets and politicians call ‘freedom’.

— Diriye Osman

I know of no evil that ever existed, nor can imagine any evil to exist, worse than the tearing of seventy or eighty thousand persons every year from their own land.

— William Pitt the Younger

In such a regime, I say you died a good death if your life had inspired someone to come forward and shoot your murderer in the chest - without asking to be paid.

— Chinua Achebe