'Like placing a palm on the continent's pulse' - Dr Peter Kimani on judging the Caine Prize for African Writing

The judging panel works with the submitted works. But I believe the Caine Trust engages in outreaches to mobilise writers to participate. Neither did we engage in regional balancing in our judging; we just picked the best writing. That said, we received over 130 submissions from 21 African countries. That's a substantial sample of the continent's writing. However, since the Caine Prize is offered to best fiction in English, or is available in English translation, this linguistic categorisation obviously locks out Arabic, Francophone and Lusophone Africa. Moreover, some 2,000 indigenous languages are in active use in Africa, so the Caine Prize can only accommodate a slice of African writers of English expression.