African writers and academics play a vital role in the strengthening of democracy and development. But they also face specific problems in making their voices heard. University and other academic publishers are hard pressed for resources and those books that do get published locally often do not reach an international audience or more than a very restricted local one. And what is published outside of the continent often does not find its way back into Africa adding to a local sense of isolation. In some states these problems are compounded by censorship which stifles alternative voices to those of the government.
This panel comprising a writer, academic and publisher will discuss ways of supporting African publishing as a crucial aspect of African civil society.
The paper proposes a critical analysis of the location of power in publishing in/on Africa and the African Diaspora by raising issues of subjectivity, agency and the wider geopolitical context impacting on the industry in relation to individual and collective identity, the text and textual practice. Using the work of Homi Bhabha, Carole Boyce-Davies and others, the paper argues that the recent historical and socio-political and economic conditions cannot be ignored in mapping the possible future for the publishing landscape in relation to Africa and the African Diaspora. It will focus on the experiences of Heinemann Books, East African Publishing, African World Press and others, New Beacon books, including the emergent publishing houses such as Ayebia. The paper concludes by exploring the notion of the will to change and presenting some concrete measures and proposals that could support the publishing, dissemination and reception of publishing in/on/for Africa.
Wangui wa Goro is an academic, social and cultural critic who works on publishing, writing and translation relating to Africa and the African Diaspora.
It is now common knowledge in Africa that knowledge production has become an institution or a conglomeration of institutions with distinct sites at universities, in civil organisations, in commissioned research and in the education system in general.
Complications arise when we ask questions about whose knowledge economy or economies are produced, circulated and consumed where and by whom. In Africa, specific sites have taken over from the politics of the everyday in the production of knowledge. People are now paid salaries to produce certain types of knowledge and this is a process that inherently excludes the authorisation of other forms of knowledge. Knowledge production is now driven by the imperative of profit. It is selective knowledge because not all of what has been created as knowledge or is authorisable as knowledge manages to see the light of day.
I suggest that the economics of knowledge production is the entire infrastructure that humans have created. This infrastructure of publishing is owned too. In Africa, most of that publishing is in foreign hands. Publishing is an appendage of European publishing houses.
Publishing in Africa is viewed as a special area which is not expected to produce knowledge but to be a conveyer belt for information developed as knowledge in other climates. Or in most cases if publishing is in African hands it first imagines its readers as Europeans. It becomes UnAfrican knowledge by marking its consumers as people living outside the borders of Africa. It is true that in these constraining circumstances African publishing has done much – mostly as popularisers of other people’s knowledge in our own societies. In some cases African publishers working with lean budgets and exhausted staff have created a minute body of knowledge that Africans can call theirs.
What is African knowledge? Are we talking of European knowledge in Africa, or African knowledge in Europe? What other forms of knowledge economy exist in Africa which have been marginalised by powerful multi-national publishing houses working with their local agents? How and where can this knowledge on the edge be mainstreamed into the public domain as valid African knowledge through publishing in Africa? Lastly, what are the links created between knowledge production and publishing in Africa in the context of the equally daunting task of democratising the knowledge production infrastructure and African societies themselves?
Abebe Zegeye is the Director of Unisa Press and Professor of Sociology at the University of South Africa. He has written extensively on political, economic and social issues in Africa.
I intend to dwell on three major things: one will be a look at the writer and the current political situation in Africa, and the question will be if the writer is really instrumental at all in decision making. My stance will be between the two extremes of the writer as a political, public voice and the writer as apolitical and individualistic.
The next issue I will look at will be how the writer in Africa has risen up to the challenge of getting heard despite the almost total absence of publishers. I will use my particular experience as example.
Lastly, I will try to suggest a way forward. The option is often to choose between staying on in Africa and embracing almost certain obscurity or moving to the west and risking loss of inspiration and contact with one’s roots. Is there a way between these two extremes?’
Helon Habila has worked both as a lecturer and a journalist in Nigeria. He was the African Writing Fellow at the University of East Anglia from 2002-2004. His first novel, Waiting for an Angel (Penguin, 2003) won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book (Africa Region). He was also a winner of the Caine Prize, 2001. His second book, Measuring Time is coming out in 2006. He is currently researching for a PhD.