A writer's award: student sponsorship.

As a committed reader of your magazine for many years, I was very interested to read about the African Banking Awards and more recently the African Business Awards that you are sponsoring.

Please allow me to suggest another Award that you could launch, this one aimed at young writers.

I am a university lecturer and I know that, with the right motivation, you could encourage students to provide fresh viewpoints with new research and analysis of Africa's business world. They would also welcome the chance to be published in a world-class journal such as yours.

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What I would propose is this. You should invite students resident anywhere in Africa to submit articles examining a particular business sector of relevance to our continent, be that agriculture, computing, finance, media, mining, energy, telecommunications, etc.

The winning entrant, judged by the editor, would have his or her article published and receive a monetary prize, a trophy and a short internship at your London offices if they wanted to pursue a writing career.

Arnold Jones

Cape Town, South Africa