AAUA Alumnus, Tosin Gbogi, Wins Double Global Awards.

AAUA Alumnus, Tosin Gbogi, Wins Double Global Awards.

An alumnus of Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba Akoko, AAUA, Dr Tosin Gbogi, has earned international recognition, clinching two prestigious awards for his scholarly contributions to African literary and cultural studies.

Gbogi, an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities, was named the winner of the Best Book Prize of the African Studies Association of the United Kingdom (ASAUK) for his book, “Nigerian Hip-Hop: Race, Knowledge, and the Poetics of Resistance”, published by Oxford University Press in 2025.

Gbogi received the award on Saturday, September 12, 2026, at the ASAUK awards ceremony at Durham University.

Published by one of the world's leading academic presses, the book examines Nigerian hip-hop as a significant site of cultural production, knowledge creation, and resistance.

Drawing on music, lyrics, visual arts, archival materials and interviews, Gbogi explores the relationship between Nigerian hip-hop, race, identity, popular culture and decolonial knowledge, while highlighting the ways young Nigerians use the genre to interrogate questions of self, nation and society.

The first comprehensive and systematic study of Nigerian hip-hop – one of the world’s oldest and most vibrant of such scenes – the book attends to the literary forms, the density of ideas, historical encounters, ideological struggles, and the lively internal debates that have animated the culture for more than four decades.

The University of Minnesota describes the work as a major study of Nigerian hip-hop's popular poetry, intermediality, Afrodiasporic connections, and contributions to decolonial and epistemic thought.

In another recognition of his scholarship, Gbogi's essay, “Ears to the Ground: Realness, Decolonial Meta-Rap, and the Language Debate in Nigerian Hip-Hop”, also received the 2026 Abioseh Porter Best Essay Award of the African Literature Association for an outstanding article in African literary studies.

Gbogi earned his Bachelor's degree in English Studies from Adekunle Ajasin University and subsequently taught at the University's Department of English Studies before proceeding abroad for further studies and academic advancement.

Before his international academic career, Gbogi had already established himself as a scholar, poet, and cultural critic. He is the author of two poetry collections, “The tongues of a shattered s-k-y” and “Locomotifs and other songs”, and has published widely on African literature, poetry, hip-hop, popular culture and linguistics.