Thomas Ayeh Jing was born in Ndop in the North West in Cameroon. His father was the village blacksmith and he spent most of his childhood in a rich traditional and rural setting. After  attending Sacred Heart College Bamenda, a Roman Catholic Secondary School founded by a renowned Irish cleric called Fr Mulligan, he headed to the Cameroon College of Arts and Science in Kumba, a coastal town, to prepare for his Advanced Level GCE. He enrolled two years later at the University of Yaounde where he studied history. After graduation, he was hired by the Ministry of National Education in Cameroon to teach history and French language. His stint as a teacher in the village of Nyasoso lasted for a year and half. He then travelled to Montreal in Canada where he studied translation at the Université de Montréal.

He returned to Cameroon in 1988 and served at the Ministry of Livestock, Fisheries and Animal Industries as Senior Translator, Service Head for Archives and Documentation as well as Communications Officer. For more than six years, he was Senior Columnist for the Cameroon Post Newspapers and a regular contributor to Cameroon Life Magazine. Amid growing political tension, insecurity and the risks of incarceration, he moved to South Africa. He worked with the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) as Advocate for Refugees and Asylum Seekers as well as Editor and Producer of Kwanza, the organization’s French-English bilingual newsletter. He also worked with the South African lawyers for Human Rights as Editing Contributor to Botshabelo, the organization’s newsletter. 

He was resettled in Canada and currently lives and works in Regina, the administrative capital of the beautiful prairie province of Saskatchewan. He has written for Catholic NewTime in Toronto, L’Eau Vive in Regina and the African Nation Magazine in Maryland. Many of his articles have been published in French and English in newspapers, newsletters and magazines across the world. Tale of an African Woman (www.africanbookscolletive.com), his first novel, was published in 2007. The book focuses on women’s rights in pre-colonial and post-independence Africa. A staunch advocate for the respect of human rights and freedom and for multiparty democracy, he has just completed a novel that is currently being edited for publication in French (Les fantômes du passé) on the human rights situation in Africa.

His other interests include black studies, martial arts (he has a blackbelt in taekwondo), and the promotion of African culture as a tool for social, economic and intellectual transformation. His project on Afrinaissance is an innovative and enlightening approach in telling the African story; and he is currently working feverishly on a project to use African folk dances to combat obesity as well as provide a decent alternative to children involved in street gangs, prostitution and drugs. His ideas on this count are summed up in Yes We Can: A Unique Cultural Blueprint to Keep Children out of Street Gangs in the US and in Canada.