Prosper Ishaya, a Chemical Engineering student at the University of Uyo, also a writer and a poet, wins the 2025 Republic Student Essay Writing Competition.

Sharing the news on his LinkedIn, Prosper writes that his essay titled, “Decolonizing the Machine: Ngũgĩ’s Legacy in the Era of AI Language,” took first position in the just-concluded essay competition. His personal essay explores a question that has become increasingly urgent as artificial intelligence continues to reshape our lives: whose languages and cultures will be represented in the systems shaping the digital future?

He further explains that his work draws on the works of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, examining how AI can reproduce existing linguistic hierarchies and what it means to build technology that better reflects the diversity of human knowledge and experiences.

The opening paragraph reads as follows: “Long before the prevalence of Artificial Intelligence and Large Language Models (LLMs), African languages already had a history of being pushed to the margins. First, they suffered in the ascent of colonial empires, then through an educational system that favoured colonial tongues. And in the late 1970s, the late Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o became one of the first Africans to confront this linguistic colonization head-on.”

To support his claim, he drew significant inspiration from his own tribe, Efik, and how it underwent decline during the colonial era.

Prosper Ishaya clinches the one million naira grand prize. Azubuike Obi (a 200-level student of English Language and Literature at Nnamdi Azikiwe University) and Nafisat (Theozohu) win second and third place respectively.