Published by a triumvirate of African publishers in South Africa, Rwanda and Kenya, Imprint Africa: conversations with African women publishers gathers interviews with nine interlocutors: Ellah Wakatama, Editor-at-large at Canongate Books and Chair of the Caine Prize; Bibi Bakare-Yusuf (Cassava Republic Press, Nigeria/UK); Zukiswa Wanner (Paivapo Publishers); Ainehi Edoro (Brittle Paper, Nigeria); Louise Umutoni (Huza Press); Lola Shoneyin (Ouida Books, Nigeria); Colleen Higgs (Modjaji Books); Goretti Kyomuhendo (FEMRITE, Uganda) and Thabiso Mahlape (Blackbird Books, South Africa).
These online conversations were facilitated by Joel Cabrita, a lecturer in African History at Stanford University and students she taught in a class on African female authors and publishing in Africa. The anthology includes a Foreword written by pioneering publisher, Margaret Busby, and an Afterword by literary activist, Kadija George Sesay which references inherited structural challenges that Joel Cabrita’s Introduction – encompassing African publishing’s colonial roots – prepares readers to understand. Read the Foreword, the excellent Introduction and the Afterword to better contextualize the information the women share about their experiences working as publishers on the continent.
If their stories are riveting, their reality is stark: life as an African publisher is a daily assault course riddled with financial hurdles and infrastructural deficits. That they are able to produce world-class books is a testament to their passion and doggedness, responding with grit to the truth that Busby articulates (ix): ‘whoever controls publishing controls the narrative’. The urgent desire to wrest from the Global North its hegemonic control of African narratives is a pillar sustaining the book production that has made their presses household names in literary circles across Africa.
The arguments the women mount impress with their intellectual rigour. They speak with candour, a fierce honesty, but even as they voice their frustration, they remain defiant, holding on tightly to hope. Home to compelling narratives about their vast lived experience, Imprint Africa deserves a wide African audience of general readers, policy makers, book industry practitioners and a global readership of people with a democratic conscience and an interest in the African book ecosystem. Distribution woes, debts of race, the chasm between writers in Africa and the diaspora, language parity, gendering, our interaction with digital culture, the voices of ordinary women transfigured by the power of publishing – this is a mere sliver of the topics broached. We find inspiration and pain nesting in expressions like these:
We have linkages to the West, but not linkages with each other on the continent … distribution channels are not effective, they’re not well established. And so you’re limited to certain geographic areas, mostly cities. (Umutoni, 119–22)
Your identity (as a Black female publisher in South Africa) requires you to have certain ethical responsibilities. But you get punished for it, because everyone in the business wants to make money…The minute you’re unable to turn over money in the way that sustains a business and sustains other businesses in the ecosystem, you become excluded. (Mahlape, 185)
Suppose I work towards bridging that divide [between continental and diaspora writers]? These writers still wrote stories from the continent, even those who had left as children. They still drew from the same epistemological space that the writers on the continent were inhabiting … So that’s how African Writer’s Trust was founded. It exists to bridge these spaces that divide us. (Kyomuhendo, 170)
I have made a very deliberate choice as a publisher to speak to the continent. I know that Ake festival exists. I know there is the amazing Hargeysa festival in Somaliland, the Gaborone festival is brilliant, in DR Congo there’s the Fête du livre. Ghana also has the Paa Gya festival. So there’s a lot of stuff happening on the continent. (Wanner, 86–7)
Modjaji is about publishing voices of the ordinary woman. Some of them become extraordinary or maybe they always were, but are more visible from the opportunity of having been published. (Higgs, 154)
There’s something about print culture that seems like it lends itself to a certain type of masculine way of constituting power. Maybe it has to do with the very rigidly hierarchical nature of both print technology and the culture around it … There’s something about digital technology that feeds into a certain way that femininity has been constructed. I’m just riffing here… (Edoro, 107–8)
I do not italicize indigenous languages in any of the books I publish … That’s a challenge for the reader, but it’s also an assertion that the centre of my world is going to be where I say it is, not where the Western canon has already said it is. And that’s the power you have with something as small as whether I use italics or not. (Wakatama, 38)
This principle of narrative control and publishing sovereignty, recurrent themes of the interviews, anchors my critique of the book.
Sovereignty: the power to define, produce, own and distribute
Cassava Republic’s co-founder, Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, argues that the mandate to not only write and curate but also publish must extend to Africans everywhere, not only to women, explaining that Cassava Republic was built on the ground of a fierce, liberationist worldview:
That was one of the things that motivated me: that we have to own the means of production. We simply cannot allow for our instrument of ideas, of our knowledge production, to be owned solely or entirely by Europeans and Americans. We can talk about being sovereign nations, yet we haven’t wrestled with this level of symbolic power and the fact that publishing is one of the most powerful propaganda machineries going, right? And whoever owns that basically captures our imagination – and I wanted to. Arrogant as that may sound. (Bakare-Yusuf, 60)
Based in Lagos, Nigeria, Lola Shoneyin, a multi-hyphenate entrepreneur, inspires as she shares the guiding vision for the founding of Ouida Books. To Joel Cabrita’s enquiry about the press’s ‘big idea’, she responds with beautiful clarity:
Discovering talent, Nigerian or African talent. And being able to make it a product that can be sold to other markets … I take inspiration from the music industry. You can attend a party and have a fantastic time in Nigeria without playing a single track by a non-African musician. This was unheard of in my teenage years. I would love to see this happen in the Nigerian literary scene. (Shoneyin, 139)
It is true, segments of African creative industries – notably music and visual art – are flourishing across the continent. Tems, Zanele Muholi, Burna Boy, Tyla, Ibrahim Mahama, these superstars spring to mind, but the region’s book industry remains trapped in infrastructural deficits that militate against its growth. Examples are poor transportation networks, unreliable energy supply, limited internet connectivity, copyright and piracy, insufficient ICT infrastructure, inadequate storage and warehousing. Both Bibi Bakare-Yusuf and Lola Shoneyin of Ouida Books demonstrate the resourcefulness for which Nigerians are famous, tackling environmental challenges – the poor postal service for example – and financial constraints brought on by stuttering revenue. The women’s efforts to ‘rebuild infrastructure that’s not really our business to build’, are Herculean (Shoneyin, 141).
… in Nigeria, there’s no one path to follow. You have to build your own infrastructure from scratch. You have to be in charge of your own warehouse, selling to the bookshops and even owning your own bookshop. Basically, you’re a Tupperware salesperson. (Bakare-Yusuf, 61)
Zukiswa Wanner, a South African writer, publisher and literary activist, is based in Kenya. She has shown great initiative, negotiating a deal with DHL for reduced rates to help scale the barriers to book distribution across the continent. Wanner has also created a WhatsApp group known as ‘BookFam Africa, with a longlist of African publishers and booksellers. This means that if you’re in South Africa and you are interested in stocking a Ouida book from Nigeria, we are only a WhatsApp message away’ (Shoneyin, 142). Despite the multiple hurdles to scale, rather than look outwards – overseas – in search of quality printing – the anticipated default – Shoneyin is committed to building local capacity:
I am of the view that we can only improve the quality of books produced by collectively setting high standards. My tweet today was, ‘I’m just really happy that more publishers are now printing in Nigeria.’ It didn’t come easy, and the journey was rocky. We’ve had to pulp thousands of books because they weren’t good enough to present to the public …. I spent a few years teaching the printer to care and pay attention to detail. A number of publishers are printing books in Nigeria now. The printer I work with even calls himself a publisher now …. I think it’s great! I love it when that happens. Everyone wins. (Shoneyin, 138–9)
Bibi Bakare-Yusuf’s bold defiance – reversing the imperial trend of what she terms the ‘Euro-American publishing industrial complex’ – is essential to any analysis of African women publishers reaching for sovereignty. Her response to Joel Cabrita’s question about her choice to go into the heart of this industrial complex by establishing an office in London, UK, should be quoted in every Global South manifesto about sovereignty in publishing:
… whether we like it or not, London, New York, Paris – these are still the centres of empire. I always remind people that we’re not in a post-colonial moment, we’re in a new colonial moment. We’re going back to the heart of Empire, to have a conversation with Empire. Why should it be that the Empire is always coming to Africa to set up office? Let’s go and set up office there and see what we can get from there. That’s reason number one [for having an office there]. (Bakare-Yusuf, 70–1)
It is difficult to read about Lola Shoneyin or any African publisher having to grovel to snobbish Northern publishers to acquire the rights to publish African writers. If their exclusion from international markets does not undermine their confidence, it is a testament to their steel and to their recognition of both the dignity of their labour and the imperative to forge ahead and look for alternative routes to the self-determination they seek. Let us hear from the founder of Ouida Books:
The discrimination we endure from publishers is horrid. UK publishers who happily sell the rights of books to other English-speaking markets like America will suddenly get jittery when those same rights are sought for an English-speaking market in Africa…. We’ve … sold the Arabic rights (of An Abundance of Scorpions by Hadiza Isma el-Rufai) to Rewayat in the United Arab Emirates. It’s almost like creating a new literary Silk Road, because the current one has become oppressive. I was on a panel at the Sharjah International Book Fair in the UAE, and I mentioned that denying African publishers the opportunity to acquire the rights of books (authored by Africans) would eventually leave Western publishers with egg on their faces. (Shoneyin, 141)
The ‘new literary Silk Road’ is a striking metaphor. It provides a natural pivot from the publishers’ local quests for sovereignty to the transcontinental currents shaping the future of publishing. Chief among them is Sharjah’s exponential rise on the African publishing horizon and the focus of the concluding part of this review.
Sharjah, United Arab Emirates – African publishing’s new Silk Road?
The Sharjah International Book Fair (SIBF) has been in operation since 1982, every year growing in size and prestige. But it was not until the founding of Emirates Publishers Association (EPA) in 2009, followed by the Sharjah Children’s Reading Festival (SCRF) in 2010, and most critically the Sharjah Book Authority (SBA) in 2014, that the Emirate’s global publishing ambitions became unmistakable. Sharjah’s eyes quickly turned towards Africa. This new gaze was not simply cultural; it was strategic. Through publishing diplomacy – book fairs, conferences, and prize sponsorships – Sharjah positioned itself as a bridge between the Arab world and the Global South. What followed was a slew of interventions into the continent’s publishing and literary ecosystems that continues today, unabated (House Reference House2023).
A brief history: in 2018 the Sharjah Book Authority sponsored the IPA’s [International Publishers Association] first ever conference on African soil, entitled Publishing for Sustainable Development: the Role of Publishers in Africa (International Publishers Association 2019).Footnote 1 It was held in Lagos, Nigeria. In 2019, SBA financed a more ambitious three-day programme titled Africa Rising: Realizing Africa’s Potential as a Global Publishing Leader in the 21st Century. It was held in Nairobi, Kenya. The IPA Africa Action Plan, launched at the 2018 Lagos conference, was distributed and the Africa Publishing Innovation Challenge was announced. The Innovation Challenge was endowed with an $800,000 fund donated by Dubai Cares, designed to strengthen the African publishing ecosystem by awarding multiple innovative projects across Africa variable grant amounts each year over four years. In 2019, Cheluchi Onyemelukwe of Nigeria won the ‘Best International Fiction Prize’ at the Sharjah International Book Fair for her novel, The Son of the House (Channels Television, 2019). Slated for 2020, the Marrakech (Morocco) conference was cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Africans are invited to participate in the Africa Rights Forum and the Sharjah Publishers Conference – valuable networking and capacity building opportunities. But there is a nagging question about representation: given the linguistic and cultural ties between the Middle East and North Africa, who are the ultimate beneficiaries of these interventions?
According to Lola Shoneyin in a Publishers Weekly interview, next-to-no publishers from sub-Saharan Africa are ever present at these fora:
I have been to book fairs where the African presence comprised a publisher or two from Egypt… But there are many of us (sub-Saharan) publishers who can and will benefit. We are looking for new ways to trade with neighbouring regions and continents, as well as trading amongst ourselves. (House Reference House2023)
Those who wish to reflect further on Shoneyin’s vision of a new Silk Road crafted by the Sharjah Book Authority may wish to read my review of IPA’s Africa Rising conference held in Nairobi (Gabi-Williams Reference Gabi-Williams2019), and my interview with Bodour Al Qasimi, Chair of the SBA (Gabi-Williams Reference Gabi-Williams2025), in which we discuss the inaugural Sharjah Festival of African Literature in January 2025.
While Shoneyin’s co-publishing experience with Rewayat (an imprint of Kalimat Group, Sharjah) is clearly a positive one, it must be emphasized that a great number of independent publishers across Africa do not share the international exposure that strengthens her position as a book trader. These small presses face a unique set of challenges, not least of which is a lack of crucial international networks. The lack of rights trading expertise is crippling. By establishing The Africa Rights Forum (TARF) at the 2023 Ake Arts & Book Festival, she is trying resolutely to change this. And as the Imprint Africa interviews underline, there is the chronic problem of under-capitalization.
With Al Qasimi’s forecast of the flood of co-publications and translations to come, my great hope is that Shoneyin’s experience will establish a powerful precedent for healthy collaborations between African independent publishers and their far better supported and savvier Arab counterparts. My great fear is of inequitable partnerships where, for example, the African co-publishers are largely relegated to the status of distributors of Arabic books across African markets made so appetizing by the opportunities of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).Footnote 2
As African publishers reach for sovereignty, only time will tell whether the new Silk Road – Africa-to-the-world-via-Sharjah – will be less oppressive and more fruitful for the domestic book trade than the prevailing ‘Euro-American publishing industrial complex’ (Bakare-Yusuf, 70).
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