AFRICAN PUBLISHING AND BRITISH AFRICANISTS

SABDET panel at the African Studies Association (ASAUK) Conference,
"What Can We Learn from Africa?" Birmingham, 9-11 September 2002
Notes compiled by Margaret Ling, SABDET

Panel chair: PROFESSOR TERRY RANGER(TR)
Panelists: PROFESSOR ALOIS MLAMBO , University of Zimbabwe; MARY JAY , African Books Collective; SULAIMAN ADEBOWALE , CODESRIA;
INNOCENT OKORO, librarian

TR: The panel aims to look at the relationship between African studies in Britain and Africa, and what we in Britain can learn from African scholars. Three key points:

• British Africanists should publish accessibly in Africa
• Course teachers should know and publicise what is being published in Africa
• British Africanists should support journals being published in Africa by submitting articles for publishing in them.

The aim is a much healthier relationship between African Studies in Britain and African scholarship and scholarly publishing.

The chair invited Sulaiman Adebowale to pay tribute to the African publisher Chief Victor Nwankwo.

SULAIMAN ADEBOWALE: Victor Nwankwo was assassinated right outside of his house in Enugu on 29 August, for reasons unknown. He was the director of Fourth Dimension Publishing, and active in fostering networks of support for indigenous publishing. He was a founding partner of African Books Collective, a founder member of the African Publishers' Network (APNET) and of the Bellagio Group. Since his death there has been a shocking lack of effort on the part of the authorities to find the perpetrators. We hope for pressure on the Nigerian police to investigate properly.

TR: introduced Alois Mlambo (AM) as the first Queen Elizabeth Fellow at Cumberland Lodge, Professor of Economic History at the University of Zimbabwe, a trustee of the Zimbabwe International Book Fair (and recently its acting director), chair of the Zimbabwe Academic and Non-Fiction Writers Association (ZANA) and editor of the journal Zambezia.

ALOIS MLAMBO: The launch of the 100 Best Books list in Cape Town immediately before this year's ZIBF was a milestone in Africa's literary development. There are many problems facing African publishing and much support is needed. But the world has drawn the wrong conclusions from the problems: that because Africa is in crisis, this has affected knowledge production and that Africa is now a net importer of knowledge. This is not true. There is much production, but it remains unknown in the North.

Academics are working in very difficult conditions. Classes are very large, many donor funds are tied. Many academics have moved into NGO research, away from academia which should be their first calling. At the 100 Best Books launch, Professor Mahmood Mamdani said that anyone who wanted to do original research in Africa had to leave Africa. I believe he is very wrong. I am amazed at how much is being produced at the University of Zimbabwe in all departments. Productivity at UZ over the last twenty years compares very favourably with that of far better resourced institutions in the North.

The problem comes with dissemination, both access to publishing and distribution within Africa, and internationally. The local book market is shrinking due to poverty, and books have not travelled internationally. The reasons include poor marketing strategies, particularly by university presses, and the failure of Northern scholars and universities to take a positive attitude — there is too much self-referencing even on topics where African scholars have produced much better work.

Tribute must be paid to African Books Collective for their work in making African scholarship visible.

Scholars in the North can also assist by ensuring that research originated in Africa is made available in Africa when published, in fact there is a moral obligation to do so. The lack of foreign currency makes it impossible to order books from the North.

Why don't African scholars publish in the North? The international politics of publishing reflect the wider political relationship between North and South, which makes it very difficult to achieve recognition and penetrate publishing.

It is essential to support African journals. They need subscriptions from the North to help viability. There is a case for asking African scholars based in the North to publish some work in Africa - Paul Tiyambe Zeleza has done so, for example - without ending up with them dominating these journals. Northern-based scholars should also be prepared to serve on the editorial boards of African journals. Scholars can get their universities to subscribe to African journals.

With regard to books, Northern scholars can prescribe African books for their courses, and review African books for Northern journals.

Northern scholars should also consider co-authoring as a way of supporting African colleagues.

MARY JAY: Introduced African Books Collective (ABC) as a not-for-profit organisation founded, owned and governed by African publishers, from Africa. ABC's mission is to strengthen indigenous publishing and to increase the visibility of African culture and scholarship, through a commercial strategy. 'Indigenous' is defined to mean local, autonomous and independent, i.e. not branches of foreign multinationals. ABC's purpose is to increase foreign currency earnings for publishers, to take advantage of exchange rates to generate high returns from overseas sales. Remittances to Africa are ploughed back into publishing.

ABC only handles books, not journals - for which African Journals on Line (AJOL), developed by INASP, exists. AJOL now has over 300 subscribing African journals.

ABC has 1,022 titles in stock. It markets and distributes worldwide. It concentrates on scholarly and academic books, literature and children's books. Over 50% of its titles are academic, and roughly 50% of sales.

ABC's market is changing. When ABC started, two academic institutions between them contributed about 50% of its sales. Today neither two feature in its top 100 customers. The reason: book buying budget cuts. The UK library market is performing abysmally by comparison with the trade and individuals. Library suppliers have become important - Blackwells is either customer no. 1 or 2.

We have more or less given up on adoption orders in the UK. It has proved to be a waste of time and effort. Adoptions only work for very specialised reasons - for example an author will prescribe their own book for a course they are teaching. The money is not there, the first recourse is to British-published books, and bookstores are reluctant to stock otherwise. But it is important that education in the North has access to African scholarship.

ABC has a full marketing and distribution programme. We have been developing print on demand (POD) for African titles. We need feedback on which titles are wanted and why African scholarship is not more central here.

In the USA, ABC has gone into partnership with Michigan State University (MSU) Press, a similar, not-for-profit institution. We need to have a US distribution centre and have been trying for some years to find a US partner - it is difficult as our list is so large and includes very specialised titles which are non-commercial. MSU Press have had a fair-sized African Studies list but it was mainly driven by one professor who has now left. The list has declined and so they need ABC as much as ABC needs them. Initially they will stock only new titles. It is a very exciting departure which will change ABC's work drastically.

SULAIMAN ADEBOWALE: Academic publishing in Africa has been unable to effectively tap the richness of its environment. By contrast, evangelical publishing is booming, especially in West Africa, and so are comics, which have a huge market.

I am sceptical about the relevance of the British and American markets for the development of African journals, in view of the apparent inability of Northern scholars to integrate African scholarship into their syllabi.

Publishers play a powerful role in deciding what gets published. A key factor is: what is the sense of value of publishing from Africa? There appears to be a different set of values for products from the South compared with products from the North. It's hard to get a handle on what academics expect.

There is a growing tendency for African institutions to hand over publication of their journals to Northern institutions and publishers. I am sceptical that this is a positive move, it may accentuate the North/South split. If the best work is being published by Carfax, Blackwells and others, this will not promote a supportive environment for journals in Africa. There is little gain in removing productive expertise from Africa.

Due to lack of time, Innocent Okoro was not able to present his paper,
From Onitsha Market Literature to General Trade Book Publishing in Nigeria, which was available in hard copy for participants.

Discussion

MIKE MORTIMORE: lived in Nigeria for 25 years and edited a journal there. Struck by the overlap, or the failure to overlap, of circles of debate in North and South. In the 1970s, the circles began to converge, but since then they have diverged. The key issue - which is a huge one - is the ownership of knowledge. Africa's ownership of knowledge has become a volcano of importance.

VICTOR AYENI, Commonwealth Secretariat: Innocent's paper, on the development of general book publishing in Nigeria from Onitsha market literature, is an exciting case study. An opportunity to develop trade publishing was lost. We have to set the decline of publishing in the context of the general decline of Africa. Universities themselves, their appointment policies, their policies towards their university presses, have been part of this problem. Universities should look at creating incentives for journals. There is much to learn from Asia. Several development agencies, such as the Commonwealth Secretariat itself, now do their own publishing and they should be drawn into the discussion.

AKIN OYETADE, SOAS & editor of the African Journal of Cultural Studies: Applauds efforts such as Zambezia. A serious problem is that African universities lack confidence in what is being produced locally, the quality needs to be improved.

INNOCENT OKORO: The editorial quality of African publishing is poor. Also poor frequency and poor quality paper.

SULAIMAN ADEBOWALE: Academic publishing in Africa needs to strengthen links with other sectors of publishing, to share knowledge, access to printers, indexing services etc, to improve quality and to strengthen publishing networks.

HELENA OLSON, Nordic Africa Institute (NAI): Most NAI titles have an African editor, author or co-author, and they are distributed free to African libraries. There are two problems:
(1) African students and scholars can still not access them easily; sometimes the NAI titles are not catalogued or shelved;
(2) distribution problems, the lack of technical capacity in African universities means that they are unable to take advantage of POD technology.

Summing up

AM: The mindset with regard to perceptions of value of African product must be changed. In Zanzibar, at the recent ABC/Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation seminar on African scholarly publishing, the initiative was taken to set up an association of African journal editors, to improve journal quality.The overlapping circles of debate which are now drifting apart are part of a process of global change. We need to develop a global knowledge community.

TR: SABDET's mission is to pursue discussion of these issues in collaboration with the ZIBF. The non-fiction part of the 100 Best Books list is a travesty. I posed the controversial question in Cape Town: does the list support a perception of Africa as good at culture but not at thinking?

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