Ebedi International Writers Residency in Iseyin, Oyo State, Nigeria, has hosted about 450 writers from 12 African countries since it opened in 2006, and about half of what they produced there has won prizes, according to its founder, Dr. Wale Okediran.

Dr. Wale Okediran, Secretary General of the Pan-African Writers Association (PAWA) and founder of the Ebedi International Writers Residency in Iseyin, Oyo State, Nigeria, disclosed this on Sunday, October 25, 2026, on The Eagle, a Freedom Square TV programme hosted by Dr. Uchenna Cyril Anioke, explaining how the facility works and why he set it up.

He said the idea grew from his own need for quiet. When he was commissioned to write his first biography, he was living in Abuja and needed two weeks of peace to complete the third and hardest phase of the work, the writing itself. He paid for a hotel in Kaduna for two weeks to finish it. Afterwards, he reasoned that a house in his hometown which the family used only at Christmas, and which stayed locked for about nine months a year, could serve writers. He raised the idea with his wife and began the Ebedi International Writers Residency in Iseyin, in 2006.

Unlike similar facilities in Western countries where residents pay, Ebedi charges nothing, since Africans cannot be expected to pay to stay in a small town or village. Ebedi International Writers receive four weeks of free accommodation and feeding, and a housekeeper cooks and does their laundry so they can focus on writing. Okediran said he funded it from his own savings at the beginning.

He said the outcomes have been significant. A Ghanaian filmmaker who completed a project at the residency recently told him that the film won five prizes, including best actor, best director and best music, at a Los Angeles film festival.

He said local residents initially asked what the town gained from hosting writers from across the world. The answer was a mentorship programme, in which resident writers teach pupils in the town’s secondary schools two days a week for two months. “It has worked,” he said, adding that the programme has uncovered talents among indigenes and that schools now request it. He called it “a win-win situation”.

Okediran said the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) has since opened a residency in Abuja and another has been opened by the current ANA President, Dr Usman Oladipo Akanbi, called, *Imodoye Writers Enclave & Residency* in Ilorin, Kwara State.

Okediran further urged Nigerians who own unused houses in their hometowns to open them to writers.