Mohamed Akounad is an established Moroccan Amazigh writer, translator, media figure, and educator considered to be one of the founding pioneers of the Amazigh Movement. He fostered and promoted generations of Amazigh writers through artistic and cultural leagues and associations such as Tamaynut and Terra.
He was born in 1950 in Id Ou Gilloul in Ihahan, one of the largest tribal confederations in the Souss region between Agadir and Essaouira. He was schooled in the mosque at a very early age and memorized the entire Koran six times in a row before he moved to Tmanar, where he completed his primary and part of his secondary school education. In 1965, he went to Taroudant to pursue his education at the famous Islamic Institute from which a great many Amazigh militants emerged, including Ahmed Adgherni, Hassan Id Belkassm, and many others. For more than two decades, he entertained thousands of Amazigh listeners in the Moroccan villages and cities with his diverse and captivating programs aired on the airwaves of the Regional Radio of Agadir. Akounad has won many awards, notably the translation prize of the Royal Institute for Amazigh Culture in 2006, and a prize from the same institute for his radio program Tosna Tamazight/ Amazigh Knowledge in 1998. Akounad has published short stories, novels, and poetry collections, including Tayyughyin n tullisin (The Waves of Riddles), Tawargit d Imik (A Dream and a Little More), Ijjigen n Tidi (The Flowers of Sweat), Tamurt n Ilfawn (The Land of the Wild Boar), Tavufi n Umiyn (A Yearning for Tales), Talkmast n Imdyazn (The Pollen of the Poets), and Tamghra n Ugani (Marriage of Anticipation). His translations include Léopold Justinard’s Un petit royaume berbère: le Tazeroualt—Un saint berbère Sidi Ahmed Ou Moussa, Lucius Apuleius’s Asenus Aureus, and Albert Camus’s The Stranger, as well as many Russian tales, and he has also published many articles in Tamazight in various national newspapers, magazines, and with Terra Press.
