Legendary playwright, dramatist and poet of world acclaim, Professor Wole Soyinka, is the guest on this weekend’s edition of African Voices Playmakers, CNN International’s  30-minute magazine programme sponsored by telecommunications company, Globacom. 

The programme anchor, Larry Madowo, will take the audience through an engaging time with the Nobel Laureate who will be sharing details of the values, the ideologies and the passion that formed the foundation of his enviable life and career. 

In the edition which commemorates Soyinka’s 90th birthday, the writer  will also recount the extraordinary activism which influenced his work and inspired a movie on his political incarceration in Nigeria planned for release this year.

Born Oluwole Akinwande Soyinka on July 13, 1934, he was awarded the Nobel Laureate in Literature in 1986 for his “wide cultural perspective and… poetic overtones fashioning the drama of existence”.

Soyinka cut his teeth in literature as a student of the University College, Ibadan, now known as the University of Ibadan and the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom. 

Aside from the Nobel Prize for Literature, Soyinka was also awarded the Benson Medal from the Royal Society of Literature in 1990;  Academy of Achievement Golden Plate Award in 2009;  Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, Lifetime Achievement, 2012, and the Europe Theatre Prize, Special Prize, 2017.

African Voices Playmakers will air at 8.30 a.m. on Saturday on DSTV Channel 401. Repeats will be broadcast the same Saturday at noon; Sunday at 4.30 a.m. and 7.00 p.m.; and on Monday at 4.00 a.m. The same edition will be repeated on Saturday next week at 8.30 a.m. and 12 noon and on Sunday at 4.30 a.m. and 7.00 p.m.