HAIKU IN WEST AFRICA
African academics, poets, diplomats, and travelers surely became aware of Japanese haiku and other short-form poetry after World War II through contact with the great works of translation and haiku history published in English and French. The first organized haiku activities in West Africa took place in Senegal with the establishment of a haiku contest in Dakar in the early 1980s that is still functioning today. Activities in Anglophone West Africa began somewhat later and have been dominated by poets from Nigeria and Ghana, who started organizations to gather regional haiku poets, published a journal for African haiku and promoted haiku book publishing, submitted to international journals and websites and posted on social media, and participated in international contests and online kukai.