One of Africa's best-known authors and gay rights activists, Binyavanga Wainaina, has died at age 48, a colleague and friend said Wednesday.
The Kenyan author died Tuesday night in Nairobi after an illness, Tom Maliti, the chairman of the Kwani Trust which Wainaina founded, told The Associated Press.
Wainaina, who won the 2002 Caine Prize for African Writing, was a key figure in the artistic community who promoted local authors. Friends and supporters in an outpouring of tributes on Wednesday shared his work including his biting essay "How to Write About Africa."
"There is nobody who is a beast or an animal, right? Everyone, we, we homosexuals, are people and we need our oxygen to breathe."
After he came out, Time magazine in 2014 named him one of the "100 most influential people."
Fellow author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wrote there that Wainaina "demystified and humanized homosexuality," saying he decided to speak openly after the death of a friend: "He felt an obligation to chip away at the shame that made people like his friend die in silence."