Accra — Golden Baobab has announced the launch of its new prizes, the $7,500 Golden Baobab Prizes for Illustrations, under which there are two awards: The Golden Baobab Prize for Illustrators and The Golden Baobab Prize for Rising Illustrators. These new illustration prizes are the biggest annual pan-African awards for African illustrators.
At the launch which was held at La Villa Boutique Hotel in Accra, Deborah Ahenkorah, co-founder and Executive Director of Golden Baobab, shared her reasons for launching the Golden Baobab Prizes for Illustrations. She said "Golden Baobab started out as a very small organization which sought to encourage African writers to create stories for African children. We have now been running our literature prizes for five years and in this time we have received over a thousand stories. At a point we realized that we needed to encourage African illustrators as well as writers because illustrations are just as important as text in a children's storybook. It is for this reason that Golden Baobab is launching these new illustration prizes today. We want to discover, motivate and celebrate African illustrators who are dedicated to creating beautiful illustrations for children."
...