Uganda's Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi has won the Kwani Manuscript Project, a new literary prize for unpublished fiction by African writers, for her novel The Kintu Saga carting away the prize winning money of $3, 500 and a publishing deal.

2nd place has been awarded to Liberia's Saah Millimono for One Day I Will Write About This War and 3rd place to Kenya's Timothy Kiprop Kimutai for The Water Spirits.

The winners were selected from a shortlist of seven by a high-profile panel of judges chaired by award-winning Sudanese novelist Jamal Mahjoub and including Deputy Editor of Granta magazine Ellah Wakatama Allfrey, leading scholar of African literature Professor Simon Gikandi, Chairman of Kenyatta University's Literature Department Dr. Mbugua wa Mungai, editor of Zimbabwe's Weaver Press Irene Staunton and internationally renowned Nigerian writer Helon Habila.

Mr. Mahjoub described all three titles as displaying "an urge to engage with the complexities of modern-day Africa," adding that as a manuscript award, the prize "naturally seeks to focus less on finding a perfect finished product than work which shows literary promise as well as a breadth and depth of vision. The winner and two runners up all reflect these values."

An elated Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi said, "When you have been writing as obsessively and for long as I have, winning a competition like this one is like stepping out in the sun after a protracted period in the dark."

Her winning entry The Kintu Saga, is an ambitious attempt to bring the history of Uganda into the present lives of the novel's protagonists. Through successive generations, the author sketches out the continued relevance of the past in the present.

Second place Saah Millimono's One Day I Will Write About This War provides a moving portrait of a young boy in Liberia who finds the hardships of his life relieved by the family of a girl he meets at school. Their lives are turned upside down with the arrival of the civil war.

While third placed Timothy Kiprop Kimutai's The Water Spirits shows great maturity in its depiction of characters and the relationships between a single mother and her two children. The author deftly manages to tread a fine line between the state of the mind and the world of the imagination."

The runner-up and 3rd placed entries will receive 150,000 KShs and 75,000 KShs respectively. An award ceremony will be held in Nairobi in November 2013 as part of Kwani Trust's 10th anniversary celebrations.

The Kwani? Manuscript Project was launched in April 2012 and called for the submission of unpublished novel manuscripts from African writers across the continent and in the diaspora. The prize received over 280 qualifying submissions from 19 African countries. In 12th April 2013 a longlist of 30 was announced and on 17th June a shortlist of seven was announced. Also shortlisted for the prize were:

Ayobami Adebayo, Stay with Me (Nigeria)

Ayesha Harruna Attah, Saturday's People (Ghana / US)

Stanley Gazemba, Ghettoboy (Kenya)

Toni Kan, The Carnivorous City (Nigeria)

Kwani Trust plans to publish the winners, as well as additional manuscripts from across the shortlist and the longlist , with the first titles planned for publication in April 2014. The Trust will also be partnering with regional and global agents and publishing houses to secure high profile international co-publication opportunities.