African publishing

Fruit d’une recherche de terrain méthodiquement conduite, le travail de Raphaël Thierry analyse une somme impressionnante de données, ce qui lui confère une incontestable dimension documentaire. […] Étude holistique d’un objet manifestement ardu, Le Marché du livre africain représente, au bout du compte, une contribution de tout premier ordre à la connaissance et la compréhension des logiques qui sont à l’œuvre dans le marché éditorial africain contemporain. Par les informations rassemblées, par les analyses amorcées ou même seulement esquissées en notes, l’ouvrage […] est tout aussi incontestablement une exploration décisive d’un objet de toute première importance symbolique mais aussi économique, pour l’Afrique, voire pour nombre de pays de l’hémisphère Sud que la globalisation dans sa configuration actuelle menace de laisser sur le bord de la route.
Pierre Fandio (Extrait de la préface)

Préface de Pierre Fandio
Postface de Joseph Fumtim

Collection "Littératures des Afriques"

This document offers an inventory and directory of book publishers’ associations in Africa, and their presence on the web and on social media. The website of the African Publishers Network (APNET) lists a total of 44 national publishers/book trade associations with ‘Full membership’ status, plus three more ‘Prospective members’. However, at this time (as at March 2021) only ten African national publishers’ associations maintain active and currently accessible websites.

It has been pointed out from time to time that, for African publishers, a web presence is perhaps not as vital for marketing and promotion – and generating sales – as it may be for other publishers in the countries of the North; and that some African publishers may well have other priorities, strategies, and needs at this time. That is true to some extent. However, it is also a fact that a good number of African publishers have realized that a web presence is now absolutely vital for them, if not necessarily to generate sales alone, but above all for visibility of their publishing activities, and, perhaps most importantly, visibility for their authors.  Equally, in terms of global reach, and in today’s digital world, a web presence is essential for any book industry organization.

Publishers’ associations in Africa are in need of a higher profile. They will want to become more proactive, more visible in shaping policies and identifying needs; and publishers and book trade associations should be driving research, data gathering, and developing training programmes for the African book professions. It could be argued that this is even more important now when, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the book industries everywhere are facing hugely difficult and uncertain times.

L'édition est un phénomène en cela qu'elle peut être observée à partir d'un moment donné et attestée à la lumière d'éléments précis. Ainsi, l'édition française commence à prendre pieds dans l'espace public à partir de l'émergence de la figure éditoriale et des aléas de ses relations avec les auteurs, de la transition progressive du statut d'auteur vers le métier d'écrivain et d'une captation d'un lectorat de plus en plus large à travers collections et autres stratégies de diffusion/distribution. L'édition française s'est toutefois tant imposée au fil de la diversification de sa production, de la généralisation de la lecture, de l'essor des catégories de littérature populaire puis de littérature "tout court"-rendue accessible pour un lectorat de plus en plus large-que l'on s'est mis à regarder les livres comme une évidence, acquis faisant foi par une présence entendue dans les bibliothèques et les librairies. La diversité des collections à vocation universaliste n'est ainsi que peu questionnée, pas plus que l'absence de mise en lumière de l'espace d'édition par la classification Dewey en bibliothèque. Il va en effet de soi que, de la fin du 18 ème siècle aux années 1950, la société française a bâti ses institutions et son industrie en même temps qu'un marché du livre national de plus en plus vaste autant que centralisé, entre logiques économiques, desseins expansionnistes et perspectives progressistes. Sur un plan historique, on observe le maintien significatif de l'entreprise Hachette au premier plan des intérêts du livre français depuis près de deux siècles. Et alors que l'éditeur pouvait jusqu'aux années 1970 être associé au prénom Louis de son fondateur, lui qui avait participé à la relégation des Panckoucke et autres frères Didot aux oubliettes de la mémoire du livre, c'est ce même Hachette-devenu au passage sixième groupe mondial d'édition-qui repousse dans les marges une diversité éditoriale francophone sous l'auvent de la captation quasi pérenne des marchés scolaires et de la diffusion d'outre-méditerranée. Il est ici intéressant de noter qu'un des opérateurs centraux de la construction du marché éditorial français au 19ème siècle est par la suite devenu un-si ce n'est le-pilier du marché du livre scolaire et de la diffusion de l'édition française dans la francophonie 1. La donnée clef de ce déplacement d'échelle concerne directement l'histoire économique et politique du 20 ème siècle. À partir de la vulgarisation et la diversification du livre et des savoirs, il a d'abord été question de mondialisation, ensuite de capitalisation et, enfin, de globalisation éditoriale. Cette globalisation, associée à l'homogénéisation du capitalisme éditorial et à la stabilisation de ses flux financiers a fabriqué un monde du livre francophone à deux vitesses, au sein duquel l'édition française rassemble un condensé des contradictions du libéralisme contemporain. Ce faisant, elle prolonge un développement unilatéral, issu d'une époque coloniale au fond pas si lointaine. Ceci permet aussi de se souvenir que l'édition française a participé à l'instauration d'une francophonie du livre même avant la francophonie, et qu'au travers de l'histoire coloniale autant que de celle de l'expansionnisme militaire et culturel européen, la France a imposé et diffusé ses modèles et toujours davantage établit son centre parisien comme point focal de son rayonnement et de son pouvoir sur le monde du livre francophone.

One night in the dark days of apartheid a house in the comparatively upmarket Soweto township of Dube was petrol-bombed. The young activists who were responsible had labelled the owner a sell-out for creating a hit television series on government-controlled television. His house was gutted. All his papers and manuscripts went up in smoke, including the  scripts of his prolific theatre oevre. It is a great tragedy that of the over sixty plays staged by South Africa’s greatest ever theatre impresario and playmaker, Gibson Mtutuzeli Kente, only four scripts survive. Of these only one is based on an authentic script. The other three were put together by actors who did a wonderful job recalling the dialogue. The surviving scripts have just been published in a collection entitled Selected Plays IV: All That’s Left. Gibson Kente began his stage career in the mid-sixties and never stopped producing until shortly before he died in 2004.  The four plays in this volume – Sikalo, Lifa, How Long and Too late – all date from the heyday of Kente’s career, namely the years leading up to the Soweto Uprising in 1976. The rest is silence. The Selected Plays series is published by Mshengu Publications. So far seven collections have been published - in an effort to preserve and make accessible African plays that would otherwise be lost. In All That’s Left the scripts of Kente’s plays are preceded by detailed introductions and accompanied by virtually the only surviving photographs of scenes from the plays.

In the 1970s and 80s there was a lively academic publishing scene in Nigeria (and elsewhere in West Africa), with several new university presses being launched. Today however, as a cursory amount of research about the current state of university press publishing in Nigeria demonstrates, the picture is bleak. The research (conducted in April 2021) revealed that traditional university press publishing activities seem to have been almost completely abandoned in most cases, although presses still exist in the form of commercial operations offering design, typesetting, and printing and binding services to the university, as well as to other customers.

Nigerian university presses operating today seem to be far removed from the ideals and primary responsibility of a university press, which should be to produce and disseminate knowledge of all kinds, and promoting a literate culture upon which the foundation of the university as a national institution must ultimately rest. Partly due to financial constraints and the demand to be self-sustained, many university presses have ceased to be publishing presses and have become printing presses. University administrators now view their presses as an opportunity for making money in times of dwindling resources, rather than as an outlet for the dissemination of scholarship.

Publishing opportunities for African scholars by Western presses, and the availability of content within Africa, remains limited. The demise, and the now almost total lack of publishing output by Nigerian university presses, with most of them currently dormant or disbanded, can be said to be a major contributory factor to this unhappy situation.

A two-part Appendix offers a select, critically annotated bibliography of scholarly publishing in Nigeria, and in other parts of Africa.

This writer is not an academic, nor is this an academic paper. It is written from the perspective of a book professional (an African studies publisher, and former publishing consultant), and as someone interested in scholarly communication. It offers some reflections about my personal experience of using Academia.edu. At the same time it might serve as something of a 'primer' about this useful networking and collaboration tool for those that are new to it.

This is the fifth in a series of annual reviews of select new literature in English that has appeared on the topic of publishing and the book sector in sub-Saharan Africa. Extensively and critically annotated and/or with abstracts, the present list brings together new literature published during the course of 2019, a total of 156 records.

Records are grouped under a range of regional/country and topic-specific headings. The literature review covers books, chapters in books and edited collections, journal articles, Internet documents and reports, theses and dissertations, interviews, audio/video recordings, podcasts, as well as a number of blog postings.

The Guest Essay in this edition, “African Books Collective: 30 Years of Providing Visibility for African Books in the Global Market Place”, has been contributed by Justin Cox, CEO, African Books Collective, the worldwide marketing and distribution organization for books from Africa that is celebrating its 30th year of trading in 2020.

This is the fourth in a series of annual reviews of select new literature in English that has appeared on the topic of publishing and the book sector in sub-Saharan Africa. Extensively annotated and/or with abstracts, the present list brings together new literature published during the course of 2018, a total of 114 records. Records are grouped under a range of regional/country and topic-specific headings.

The literature review covers books, chapters in books and edited collections, journal articles, Internet documents and reports, theses and dissertations, interviews, audio/video recordings, podcasts, as well as a number of blog postings.

Starting with the 2018 edition it now also includes a ‘Guest essay’ feature preceding the literature survey. The first contribution is Richard Crabbe’s ‘Revitalizing the Book Chain for National and International Cooperation’, his keynote address at the opening ceremony of the 16th Ghana International Book Fair on 30 August 2018, an eloquent and timely address, and which at the same time offers a succinct summing-up of the state of publishing and the book sector in Africa today.

No less than three international meetings on publishing in Africa have taken place recently, which have been followed with detailed action plans. Among many other recommendations, calls for action to find solutions to perennial problems, as well as discussions focusing on sectorial innovation and revitalization of the African book industries, participants in all three meetings were strongly urged to start collecting and disseminating book industry data.

It is true that reliable figures of book publishing output for the continent of Africa do not exist at the present time, with the exception of a very small number of countries, notably South Africa and Morocco.  Meantime the state of African national bibliographies, which can form the groundwork of book industry data, presents a picture of neglect for the most part, with many national bibliographies seriously in arrears, currently dormant, or having ceased publication altogether. Only a small number are accessible in digital formats.

Book publishing data and book production statistics are important elements in measuring the growth and vitality of indigenous publishing in any part of the world. In the absence of such data for most of the African continent, there is a need for research, analysis, documentation, and systematic gathering of current, reliable data and statistics on the whole book sector in Africa. However, there are huge challenges and complexities in the goal of collecting data for book industry surveys, which must not be underestimated.  Many questions will need to be asked: for example, how is data going to be collected and analysed; what will be the parameters; and what are going to be the sources and the methods? Who should be responsible for undertaking the research and the compilation of such book industry data; and, crucially, who is going to fund the research and the data gathering process on a systematic and ongoing basis?

Collecting book industry data is closely interrelated with the publication of national bibliographies and, in addition to examining the issues and challenges relating to the creation of book industry statistics, this paper also provides an analysis of the current state of national bibliographies in Africa, as well as linked matters such as legal deposit legislation, and compliance of legal deposit. Most national libraries and bibliographic agencies in Africa continue to operate under severe constraints, and have been chronically underfunded by their governments for the past four decades or more. An analysis of the current status of African national bibliographies sadly presents a dismal picture.

It is unlikely that reliable data for the African book industries can be collected and published without the input and full cooperation of national libraries or bibliographic agencies. There is equally an urgent need for much more active collaboration and interaction between the agencies producing national bibliographies with publishers and book trade associations in each African country.

Any attempts to revive the fortunes of African national libraries, and the resumption of publication of high quality and timely national bibliographies, will amount to a formidable task. This paper offers a range of suggestions and recommendations how the situation might be addressed and improved, but also points out that regular compilation of a national bibliography, and effective maintenance of legal deposit, necessitates adequate staff in terms of both numbers and expertise, which is not the case at this time.

This paper sets out the need for more systematic and more vigorous research and documentation, data gathering, and analysis of the African book sector. This should include, for example, compilation of publishing data and book production statistics, as important elements in measuring the growth and vitality of indigenous publishing in Africa today. It also argues for the desirability for more collaboration, knowledge sharing, and information and skills exchange within Africa; as well as the possible development of North-South links and partnership programmes, such as for example a programme to establish a North-South research group, a new research cluster or network bringing together suitable academic and research institutions in Africa, Europe, and North America. A final section offers some pointers for reinvigorating research, and possible forms of collaboration.

Des années 1950 à aujourd’hui, les littératures camerounaises ont été prises en charge par différentes sphères de publication : de Paris à Ibadan, en passant par Londres, Limbe ou Yaoundé. Derrière ces espaces, des histoires de relations coloniales, économiques, littéraires ou encore de construction idéologique ont influencé le développement des corpus camerounais, faisant du Cameroun un lieu de haute pression éditoriale. Cet article propose une analyse des positions éditoriales camerounaises au cours des sept dernières décennies. Il s’agit d’y observer la marginalité comme constitutive du livre camerounais. Cette marginalité est alors tantôt subie et tantôt assumée comme une stratégie d’autonomie intellectuelle.

A paraitre : publication envisagée dans les Actes de la journée d'étude du GRIAD "Écritures émergentes et nouvelles marges au Cameroun", sous la direction de Pierre Fandio.

Programme : http://apela.hypotheses.org/759

This article considers the challenges and opportunities for African publishing in an age of 'book globalization', dominated by large multinational firms based in Europe and North America since the 1980s. 'Bibliodiversity' is desirable. Different kinds of networks have been structured for the African book market to sustain diffusion and distribution. It is important to take account of the institutions, economic factors and authors' strategies which lie behind a given book. The first part of this article considers the relations between African literary production and the global book market. The second considers the Cameroonian book market and globalisation.

This chronological timeline sets out some of the key dates, events, and landmarks in the development of indigenous publishing in sub-Saharan Africa. It also includes details of the major conferences, meetings or seminars on African publishing, held in Africa or at venues elsewhere, since 1968. An earlier version of this chronology first appeared in The African Publishing Companion: A Resource Guide (2002), and has now been updated through to the period up to 2019, and considerably expanded to also include publication of a number of benchmark studies, conference proceedings, journals, and reference resources on the African book world.

Entre les langues, les marchés et les labels, l’édition africaine représente un objet constant de discours. Celle-ci interroge en permanence notre regard sur le livre et notre relation à l’offre éditoriale internationale. Le temps est désormais révolu où le discours quasi unique concernant l’édition en Afrique portait sur la prétendue «famine du livre» continentale liée à la crise économique des années 1980. Depuis trois décennies, les marchés du livre n’ont fait que croître sur le continent, diversifiant leur production à travers une circulation des livres et de l’information éditoriale toujours  plus intensives et transnationales. L’édition africaine demeure toutefois bien souvent présentée à travers les difficultés rencontrées par ses agents plutôt que, précisément,  leur capacité d’agentivité  («Agency»). Indiscutable, historiquement établi, le livre africain se fait pourtant le miroir de la globalisation éditoriale et de ses flux  économiques. Les enjeux économiques qui y ont cours reflètent alors les inégalités, les alternatives –les marges, aussi– d’un monde du livre toujours davantage concentré. L’édition africaine participe de même à un double questionnement : en  Afrique, elle doit défendre sa  légitimité économique et intellectuelle en fonction de  contextes sociopolitiques évolutifs et de marchés éducatifs en situation d’extraversion; à l’international, elle doit se positionner vis-à-vis de l’édition non africaine de littérature et de non-fiction qui concentre la majorité de la production intellectuelle africaine dans le monde. En étudiant les discours sur le livre africain, discours d’éditeurs africains et évolution du marché international du livre africain francophone depuis les années 1980, cette réflexion se propose d’interroger la relation entre l’industrie du livre en Afrique et le phénomène de mondialisation du livre, afin de mettre au jour un tissu permanent d’échanges, de tensions et d’influences, faisant du marché du livre africain un espace «glocal», s’il en est.
//
In terms of languages, markets and labels, African publishing represents a field of constant discourse. It also continually questions not just the way we look at books, but also our relationship with them and with the international publishing industry. The time has long passed when the leading discourse on publishing in Africa was devoted primarily to a “book famine” related to the African economic crisis of the 1980s. Over the past three decades, the African book market has done nothing but grow on the continent, diversifying its increasingly dense and transnational production through the circulation of books and of publishing information. Nonetheless, quite often African publishing is presented in terms of the difficulties faced by its stakeholders, rather than those stakeholders’ agency, their capacity to develop their markets. Indeed, history has shown that the African publishing industry is a mirror of the globalisation of publishing and of its economic flux. That being the case, the economic challenges that one can observe in the African industry is thus a reflection of the imbalances, alternatives –also margins –of a world of books that is increasingly concentrated. In this sense, African publishing invites a two-fold interrogation: in Africa it must advocate a cultural and economic legitimacy within evolving socio-political situations and an outward-looking educational market. Internationally, it must position itself in terms of non-African publishing of literature and non-fiction that makes up the majority of African intellectual production in the world. By examining the discourse around African books, African publishers’ discourse, and the evolution of African books in French since the 1980’s, this article aims to question the relationship between the book industry in Africa and the globalisation of books phenomenon in order to bring to light a network of exchanges, tensions, and influences that turns the African book market into a veritable “glocal” space.

Avec "Le marché du livre africain et ses dynamiques littéraires. Le cas du Cameroun" (Presses universitaires de Bordeaux), Raphaël Thierry documente méthodiquement les enjeux de la visibilité de l'édition africaine contemporaine. Quelles sont les logiques à l'œuvre qui noient aujourd'hui la production de l'édition africaine dans le marché de l'édition de littératures africaines proposées par les maisons d'éditions occidentales ? Comment d'autres logiques se mettent en place pour proposer une diversité littéraire effective dans le marché globalisé ? Une réflexion qui englobe tout autant les logiques francophones qu'anglophones, en proposant par ailleurs une étude très précise sur le marché éditorial camerounais. Rencontre avec Raphaël Thierry, aujourd'hui postdoctorant au Research & Study Centre "Dynamics of Change" de l'Université de Mannheim.

[Document mis à jour le 12.02.2016]

Although the Global North has been factoring the African publishing industry into its thinking for the last thirty years, it has typically considered Africa through the narrow lenses of "emerging markets" fraught with difficulties and "developing countries" caught in a state of constant technological, economic, and stylistic flux. One could attribute this to widespread ignorance of the African publishing industry as well as a misguided approach to African markets as just another piece in the global puzzle, rather than an economy that must be analyzed and assessed according to its own complex morphology. Far too often, conversation proceeds without any real attention to the industry's actual output. In this chapter, I wish to address the misunderstandings that surround the African book trade and that contribute to its exclusion from major trends in international literature: the conception of African publishing as a unique market that is under threat and requires protection, or, conversely, as an industry with its own niche within the international market, rather than as a fully established member of the world literature corpus. These misperceptions linger even though literature that has long been categorized as "African" consistently interrogates hegemonic and classificatory modes of conceptualizing "African literature," and despite, moreover, the marked rise of World Literature and of interest in new paradigms through which to better apprehend global realities. In: Francophone Literature as World Literature, Christian Moraru, Nicole Simek, Bertrand Westphal (eds). New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/francophone-literature-as-world-literature-9781501347146/

REVIEW OF AFRICA RISING: International Publishers Association (IPA) Regional Seminar Nairobi, June 2019

Olatoun Gabi-Williams of BORDERS LITERATURE FOR ALL NATIONS reviews the recently held International Publishers Association Nairobi Seminar
14th - 15th June 2019
Hosted in Nairobi, Kenya

http://bordersliteratureonline.net/eventdetails/IPA-Nairobi-Seminar

I recently had the privilege of meeting British-Nigerian writer and professor of literature Sarah Ladipo Manyika at an African literature festival, called “Writing in Migration,” which took place in Berlin. The first of its kind, its mission was to promote African writers from the continent, as well as from the German-speaking diaspora. A majority of the authors attending WIM were published by the rapidly expanding Nigerian press called Cassava Republic. The organizers highlighted that this was “the first literary festival with and by African writers in Berlin,” and its inaugural edition focused on the themes of transnationalism and migration.
A citizen of the world, Sarah Ladipo Manyika lives in San Francisco and Harare. She was born in Nigeria and lived successively in the U.K., Kenya, Senegal and France. She is the author of two novels published by Cassava Republic, and of numerous short stories and essays. We took a pleasant walk through the center of Berlin and she spoke about her identity as a writer, her work as a wordsmith and about the many intriguing and fascinating characters in her novels. Manyika has made some unusual publishing choices and she offered incisive insights into the differences between African publishing houses and those in the Global North. The interview took place on April 28, 2018.

Les années quatre-vingt représentent un tournant pour la production littéraire africaine. En Afrique, l’édition subit une crise économique. D’une édition attractive et en plein essor, on passe à un « non-lieu littéraire » où il y a beaucoup à reconstruire. Voici l’émergence du concept de « famine de livre » en Afrique. Au Nord, la même période est le creuset d’un renouveau : les éditeurs et les catalogues qui prennent alors leur essor annoncent l’internationalisation littéraire africaine à venir. Celle de la World Alliance, du « Tout-Monde » littéraire…
Il n’est alors pas défendu de se demander si cette construction littéraire, pourvoyeuse de grandes œuvres et de consécrations diverses, ne bénéficie pas du bouleversement des économies littéraires en Afrique. D’une construction, on passe alors vers l’idée d’une déconstruction.
Il est ainsi intéressant de porter un regard sur les « ailleurs » de cette économie littéraire africaine de plus en plus mondialisée, mais polarisée au Nord. Au sein de ces « ailleurs », des dynamiques se développent. Elles favorisent production et rapatriement littéraires. Surtout, elles contredisent la violence d’un don sans retour (contre-don) et celle d’une extraversion littéraire sans alternative. Mais doit-on y voir là une économie du livre contestataire des modèles imposés, volontairement marginale, ou plutôt une édition « tout-court » et surtout mal connue ?
Cette communication proposera d’analyser une certaine forme de violence littéraire en prenant en compte la relation entre le don de livre intensif vers l’Afrique et la monopolisation littéraire de l’édition du Nord.

Dr. Jama Musse Jama’s experience as a returnee in his home country is the most compelling case I have encountered for returning home.  Saying yes to the call of Somaliland, his home country, was to say good bye to Italy where for many years he had resided peacefully and worked successfully as a citizen, scholar and ethnomathematician. In 2008, he would be stepping into a country which had declared independence in 1991 from the rest of Somalia, the motherland which had witnessed not only the overthrow of  President Siad Barre that same year but far worse, the nightmare plunge of the entire land  - already plagued by severe drought - into chaos unleashed by warring militias, provoking the exodus of thousands of Somalis fleeing starvation, seeking food and safety in neighbouring Kenya and Ethiopia. Before the establishment of a Federal Government in 2012, these perilous times in Somalia also witnessed the rise of Islamist insurgency notably the militant group Al-Shabab whose power and influence continued to rise.
Dr. Jama Musse Jama, founder of the Hargeysa International Book Fair, is a large-hearted intellectual. Somaliland continues to make room for this returnee despite initial scepticism about his approaches to nation-building -  not with science and economic formulae but with his belief in the sacredness of the human being and by a consistent and strategic application of the arts to demonstrate it.

Article publié par Ina Global, le 20 avril 2016 : http://www.inaglobal.fr/edition/article/quand-l-edition-africaine-s-emancipe-8944

Comme les éditeurs français exportent massivement leurs livres vers l'Afrique, on pourrait croire à l'absence d'un secteur éditorial dynamique sur le continent. Or, derrière des données en trompe-l'oeil, l'édition africaine connaît une réelle croissance.

Education in a familiar language has the potential to impact students' outcomes for the better, but is often hindered by a lack of instructional materials in the languages that would be most appropriate for them.  This paper examines the stages of producing books in African languages: language development, research on the educational situation, curriculum development, the writing process, the publishing process, and the distribution process.  Case studies of materials design projects from Ghana, Namibia, and South Africa illustrate various facets of the creation process.

Diese Arbeit wird sich im Folgenden ausschließlich mit der anglophonen Literatur Afrikas des 20. Jahrhunderts befassen. Betrachtet man die Publikationsspanne von 1960 bis 1980 und die hier erschienen Romane, rückt die Frage ins Zentrum, wie sich die Autoren selbst in Bezug zu ihren Texten, Themen und zu ihrer Heimat verorten. Die Arbeit wird sich auf die Publikationsgeschichte von Heinmanns African Writers Series und Faber&Fabers Publikation von The Palm-Wine Drinkard konzentrieren, um das Verhältnis der Verlagshäuser und der Autoren zu analysieren.
Der besonders durch Heinemann publizierte anglophone „afrikanische Roman“ entstand, so wird oft in der Sekundärliteratur postuliert, als Versuch die kolonialen Geschehnisse und deren Auswirkungen neu zu bewerten, einen kulturellen Nationalismus zu definieren, vor allem aber auch als politischer Einspruch und als antikolonialer Protest.

Lettres d’Afrique is a “connective space” aiming to strengthen African publishers' presence at Frankfurt Book Fair 2018.
As to “change the narrative”, the challenge is to promote a programme not putting “African publishing” as a central topic or within a single field of discourse (professional, academic, media, etc.), or to focus on one single language as well. The project defends African publisher’s outputs and business in Frankfurt and stresses their contribution to bibliodiversity. Lettres d’Afrique aims to advocate these publishers’ legitimacy within the international book market, towards a world readership.

Des années 1950 à aujourd’hui, les littératures africaines ont été prises en charge par différentes sphères de publication : de Paris à Ibadan, en passant par Londres, Dakar ou Yaoundé. Derrière ces espaces, des histoires de relations coloniales, économiques, littéraires ou encore de construction idéologique ont influencé le développement des corpus africains, objets littéraires de haute pression éditoriale. Cet article propose une analyse de positions éditoriales africaines et camerounaises en particulier au cours des sept dernières décennies. Il s’agit d’y observer la marginalité comme élément constitutif du livre en Afrique ; cette marginalité est alors tantôt subie et tantôt assumée comme une stratégie d’autonomie
intellectuelle.

Entre les langues, entre les marchés et entre les labels, l'édition africaine constitue un objet d'analyse dont le caractère protéiforme interroge de manière permanente notre regard sur le livre et notre relation à l'offre éditoriale contemporaine. Le temps est désormais passé où le discours quasi unique concerné par l'édition en Afrique portait sur la prétendue « famine du livre » continentale. Si une crise a bien eu lieu au cours des années 1980, mettant un frein à la production éditoriale dans de nombreux pays d'Afrique, les marchés du livre n'y ont ensuite fait que croître au cours des 30 dernières années, se diversifiant à travers une circulation de plus en plus intensive et transnationale. L'édition africaine demeure toutefois encore bien souvent présentée à travers les difficultés rencontrées par ses agents plutôt que, précisément, la capacité d'« agentivité » (« Agency ») de ces derniers. Indiscutable, historiquement établi, le livre africain se fait en effet aujourd'hui et plus que jamais le miroir de la globalisation éditoriale. Les enjeux économiques qui y ont cours reflètent les inégalités, les alternatives –les marges aussi– d'un monde du livre concentré et si souvent présenté selon une configuration Nord-Sud, verticale et unilatérale. L'édition africaine participe de même à un double questionnement : hors d'Afrique, elle demeure assez peu visible car faiblement prise en charge par la recherche universitaire et les médias ; en Afrique, elle répond souvent –logiquement– à des priorités nationales plutôt qu'au marché international du livre où les éditeurs du Nord accaparent la majorité du spectre de littératures et sciences humaines. On se demandera alors comment une édition peut exister à deux niveaux, entre espace global et marché local, sans forcément que l'un et l'autre ne s'opposent systématiquement. En étudiant les discours d'éditeurs africains –principalement francophones mais aussi anglophones et wolofs– 1 cette présentation proposera alors d'étudier des politiques éditoriales, des positionnements intellectuels et des affiliations stratégiques qui confrontent chaque jour ces professionnels à la nécessité de conforter ou bien de développer leur place dans un espace éditorial " cible " , tout en utilisant des passerelles et alternatives pour exister à l'intérieur d'autres espaces et capter d'autres lectorats. Ce faisant, ces derniers se retrouvent sur l'écheveau d'une « glocalité » stratégique, entre positionnements de résistance vis-à-vis de monopoles éditoriaux exogènes et négociation de leur présence au sein d'un marché du livre libéralisé et ultra-concurrentiel.

From the 1980s, the rise of postcolonial studies as well as the new World Literature field have facilitated better promotion and overview of what is published by African authors in the West. As evidence of that change we could mention major literary awards like Ben Okri's Booker Prize in 1991, or Ahmadou Kourouma's Prix Renaudot in 2000.
However, and especially in the francophone book sphere, an imbalance between the African publishing industry and Western book publishers such as Hachette was identified from the 1970s. Indeed, is it not odd that the internationalization of African literatures chimed at the same time with a silence from African publishers?
And even if the African book crisis in the 1980s and the development of that ambiguous conception of the ‘book famine in Africa' are frequently discussed, it is surprising that media and research deal more and more with African publishing problems and are less and less interested in African publishing diversity. What is more, it is striking that the decline of African publishing coincided with the so called ‘book globalization’.
The situation has changed since these times and nowadays in the francophone sphere we can observe the implementation of new operators engaged in distributing and defending African book interests, like the Alliance Internationale des Editeurs Indépendants, Afrilivres or l'Oiseau Indigo. However, it is all the same interesting to observe that some of these are opting for a position of strategic marginality to develop their actions. Therefore, my presentation analyzes current trends of African book promotion in the francophone world and in the wider book world.

Short abstract:
Focusing on governmental & philanthropic involvements from the 1950s to the 1980s, this presentation has the purpose of highlighting how Francophone African countries encountered the challenge of an autonomous book sector, while African books remain invisible in contemporary research.

Long abstract:
The African-book industry was always an economic stake for the Western world, raising many questions on structural autonomy, soft power survival and the postcolonial transition. These issues are particularly sensitive in Francophone Africa. Indeed, it is surprising to observe that France set up cultural cooperation with its "almost" former African colonies starting in the late 1950s. By creating a cultural network in Africa, France rather negotiated a transition towards independence, setting a strategical role for French publishers in African educational programs and establishing Paris as a centre for the outreach of African literature. Actually, the independence of the African-book industry remains problematic because it became the arena for growing bilateral and multilateral Western involvement, from the early 1960s. This external influence has never ceased. Furthermore, in the late 1970s, it was strengthened by the pressure of the Bretton-Woods economic institutions that counteracted Unesco's initial will to support autonomous African book development. When the economic crisis appeared in Africa in the 1980s, all those foreign presences met a philanthropic involvement. This charity movement - with Scandinavian, Francophone and US governments and NGOs in the first place - broadcast at that time the false picture of a "book famine" in Africa. Subsequently, it is interesting to observe the 'presence' - i.e. the invisibility - of the African book in the ascending francophone and postcolonial studies from the 1980s to nowadays.

Communication présentée dans le cadre de la journée d'étude de l'Association pour l'Etude des Littératures Africaines (APELA), Université Paris-Est, 19 septembre 2014.

Thème de la journée d'étude : "Tranches d’histoire : Fondations et ruptures, périodes et événements dans l’historiographie des littératures africaines"

Abstract : "En 1986 paraissait le pharaonique ouvrage European-language Writing in Sub-Saharan Africa issu du projet « History of African Literature in European Languages »), sous la férule d’Albert Gerard. Cet ouvrage de 1200 pages se faisait la somme du travail de plus de cent spécialistes. À ce jour, il constitue certainement encore la plus importante référence de travail pour qui s’intéresse à l’histoire littéraire africaine. Il s’agit aussi d’une fenêtre ouverte sur un autre travail mené par Albert Gerard consacré à l’histoire littéraire en langue Africaines (Littératures en langues Africaines, 1992). Quelques trente années plus tard, des travaux se sont multipliés dans cette lignée, de Richard Bjornson à Claire Dehon, en passant par Marc Quaghebeur ou Hans Jürgen Lüsebrink. Peu à peu, une somme bibliographique consacrée à l’histoire des productions littéraires africaines in extenso – au-delà du paradigme avant/après la période coloniale – vient constituer une vaste chronologie, foyer de connexions et de croisements disciplinaires : sociologie littéraire, anthropologie, linguistique, sciences de l’information et de la communication. Au sein de ce champ de recherche en perpétuelle genèse, on dispose d’éléments de plus en plus précis sur différents espaces littéraires africains. Peu à peu, émerge en filigrane de ce corpus une histoire du livre et de l’édition en Afrique. Il est alors intéressant de chercher à apporter non pas de nouveaux éléments mais, plutôt, de confronter ces différentes “expériences littéraires africaines” à la lumière d’un matériel sans cesse enrichit. Cette communication s’attachera donc à émettre quelques propositions de réflexion et de comparaison autour des études éditoriales africaines à partir d’espaces comme le Cameroun ou la République Démocratique du Congo.

The Nigerian International Book Fair took place from Tuesday, 27th July - Thursday 29th July 2021. It was a hybrid fair this year. After the fully virtual edition of 2020, encouraging signs of a nation in recovery were the car park filled with vehicles including mini-buses and jeeps and people walking purposefully about the premises of Harbour Point, Victoria Island, Lagos.

The current environment is particularly rich for debating and discussing the relationship between the African publishing industry and the international book market. Do African publishers know that they owe Caroline Broué, the radio journalist who made a massive gaffe with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie recently, some major media coverage about the existence of a publishing industry in Africa?

http://www.warscapes.com/opinion/france-and-francophone-african-publishing-game-chess

En proposant ce bref survol de certaines évolutions de l’édition pour la jeunesse en Afrique francophone au cours des quinze dernières années, à partir d’un positionnement européen, nous devons avant tout, et peut être paradoxalement, souligner l’impossibilité de l’exercice. Rendre justice au « livre africain » commence déjà par en reconnaitre l’infinie richesse et la diversité. De même qu’il n’y a pas de « courant européen de l’édition jeunesse », nous éviterons donc de simplifier des situations continentales en une unité homogène. En ce sens, cette brève réflexion doit plutôt être considérée comme un « aperçu européen » sur des perceptions du livre africain pour la jeunesse, dont la visibilité au Nord ne représentera jamais la somme des réalités africaines in situ.

Article publié dans Takam Tikou, « La belle histoire de la littérature africaine pour la jeunesse : 2000-2015 », mars 2016 : http://takamtikou.bnf.fr/dossiers/dossier-2016-la-belle-histoire-de-la-litt-rature-africaine-pour-la-jeunesse-2000-2015