Chimamanda Adichie To Be Awarded Honorary Doctorate By Johns Hopkins University

Photograph — John Rhoda
The author of widely acclaimed novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, has recently been named as one the distinguished achievers to be awarded honorary degrees, this year, by the Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, United States. The honorary degrees will be conferred at the university’s commencement ceremony on the 18th of May, 2016.

Adichie will be awarded alongside seven other recognized individuals, visionaries who have made a mark in various fields. They include groundbreaking filmmaker Spike Lee, the founding director of the Bill and Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health, Laurie Zabin, Nobel Prize winner, Richard Axel, amongst others.

Ronald J. Daniels, President of the Johns Hopkins University, describes the group as people who have challenged the status quo and changed the world for the better. They have made a lasting impact on the arts, public health, the law, neuroscience and the resilience of communities here in Baltimore and across the globe.”

This is a very well deserved honour for Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. As one of the world’s leading feminist and an insightful cultural critic, she has become quite influential on the global stage over the years, continually gaining recognition. The author who earned a Master’s degree from Johns Hopkins’ Writing Seminars in 2003, is no stranger to awards and has amassed quite a number already. Her novel, Americanah, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction in 2013. In 2008, she won a MacArthur Foundation genius grant.

A year ago, Adichie was listed among Time’s 100 most influential people.

Last November, she received the award for the ‘Best of The Best’ female fiction writer for the last decade by the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction and also made the list of 100 most influential Africans by the New African Magazine. And in January 2016, she made Ventures Africa’s list of 15 African Creatives To Watch Out For this year