Lorenzo Menakaya

Lorenzo Menakaya is a Nigerian on-air personality, actor, filmmaker and singer. Lorenzo's powerful vocal presence earned him nominations for the On-Air Personality (OAP) of the year at The Future Awards Africa (TFA) 2011 and 2012; in 2016, he won the Nigerian Broadcasters Merit Awards for Best Radio Presenter (Midday Show) and Nigerian Fashion & Style Awards for Radio Personality of the year. In December 2014, he was selected to participate in the Unilever funded Academy for African Filmmakers by MOFILM, United Kingdom. Lorenzo has starred in several Nollywood films and television series including a major role in "Crazy, Lovely, Cool" a TV series on Netflix produced by Trace TV and directed by Obi Emelonye. He produced his debut feature film titled "Ordinary Fellows" in 2019 and it has been screened in over twenty film festivals around the world winning Best Director award at the African World Film Festival in Michigan, USA. In 2021, he produced a feature film titled 'Other Side of History', a film that focuses on the life of Chukwuemeka Ojukwu between 1954 and 1960 before Nigeria's independence. Lorenzo hosted the Africa Movie Academy Awards (AMAA) in 2019 and 2020. He was a visiting lecturer at the "Introduction to World Musics (Afrobeat & Afrobeats)" class of the Department of Music at Spelman College, USA. For his achievements in African literature and cinema, he received the James Currey Writing Fellowship and Residency in May 2022 from the James Currey Society at Oxford University's Centre for African Studies.