The Nigerian Bar Association has announced Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie as Keynote Speaker at its forthcoming Annual General Conference in Lagos.
Adichie, author of Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun, Americanah, and several other works, will be speaking at the opening ceremony of the conference in August.
The conference, themed “Bold Transitions”, will take place at the Eko Atlantic City, Victoria Island, Lagos from 19th to 26th August, 2022. Registration for the conference is ongoing at www.nbaconference.com with and early bird window which will run until 17th July.
Chimamanda Adichie was born in Enugu, Nigeria in 1977 and grew up on the campus of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where her father was a Professor and her mother was the first female Registrar.
She started out as a medical student at Nsukka before departing for the US where she took a different path, graduating summa cum laude from Eastern Connecticut State University with a degree in Communication and Political Science. She has a Master’s Degree in African Studies from Yale University, and a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing from Johns Hopkins University.
Ms. Adichie was awarded a Hodder fellowship at Princeton University for the 2005-2006 academic year, a MacArthur Fellowship in 2008, and a fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute of Harvard University for the 2011-2012 academic year.
She has received honorary doctorate degrees from Eastern Connecticut State University, Johns Hopkins University, Haverford College, Williams College, the University of Edinburgh, Duke University, Amherst College, Bowdoin College, SOAS University of London, American University, Georgetown University, Yale University, Rhode Island School of Design, Northwestern University, and University of Pennsylvania.
Ms. Adichie has delivered two landmark TED talks – her 2009 TED Talk ”The Danger of A Single Story” and her 2012 TEDx Euston Talk ”We Should All Be Feminists”, which was published as a book in 2014.
Adichie’s work has been translated into over 30 languages. Her first novel, Purple Hibiscus (2003), won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize; her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), won the Orange Prize; and her 2013 novel, Americanah, won the US National Book Critics Circle Award and was named one of The New York Times Top Ten Best Books of 2013. A story from her collection, The Thing Around Your Neck, was awarded the O Henry Prize.
Her other works include Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, published in March 2017, and Notes On Grief, an essay about losing her father, published in 2021.
A member of both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Ms. Adichie was named one of TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2015, and in 2017, Fortune Magazine named her one of the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders.
The 2022 NBA Annual General Conference is expected to bring together thought leaders in the areas of justice delivery, technology, economy, politics, judicial reforms, human rights, and rule of law, said Tobenna Erojikwe, Chairman, Technical Committee on Conference Planning (TCCP).
“The aim is to have leading lawyers and thought leaders in the various fields to discuss and harmonise positions on the way forward on building a more effective Bar and a resilient country able to thrive amidst changing global dynamics,” Erojikwe said.
