Abdilatif Abdalla

born in Mombasa in 1946, is a Kenyan writer, lecturer and political activist who writes in Swahili. He was imprisoned for his support of the opposition Kenya People’s Union from 1969-1972 and while in solitary confinement wrote the poems collected in the volume Sauti ya Dhiki, which subsequently won the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature. After exile in Tanzania from 1972 and Great Britain from 1979, where he worked for the BBC World Service, among others, Abdilatif Abdalla has lived in Germany since 1995. He teaches Swahili at the University of Leipzig.