By James Hall
MBABANE, Nov 11 2004 (IPS)

Many column inches have been devoted to the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) – a blueprint for using improved governance to attract more investment to the continent. However, it could be argued that the plan remains something of an enigma to many.

Now, publishers in Africa are trying to remedy this situation.

“For…economic and cultural change to occur, the leadership of the continent and the secretariat of NEPAD need to communicate its vision and objectives to the grassroots. The problem today is that the common person on the street has no inkling what NEPAD is about,” noted a recent editorial in ‘African Publishing Review’ – a trade publication and mouthpiece for the African Publishers Network (APNET).

“To this end, the publishing industry on the continent is a very strategic industry,” the editorial added. APNET connects book publishers from 46 countries, from the Mediterranean to the Cape.

However, the African publishing industry faces a number of obstacles in telling readers more about NEPAD – or other affairs on the continent, not least the fact that Africa has low literacy rates.

“Book publishing in Africa today essentially means school textbooks. Few Africans have the disposable income to purchase books,” says a Johannesburg-based publisher, adding “Either they were not brought up as children in a home reading culture, or poverty keeps them from acquiring the home libraries they would like.”

Sixty percent of the school textbook market in Africa is dominated by two multinational publishing companies – neither of which is African, (in francophone Africa, 95 percent of school textbooks and other books are produced by French publishers).

Three other multinational firms control a further 20 percent of the continent’s market – again, none of these are African companies. As a result, only one out of five books sold in Africa is produced by a publishing house based on the continent.

Even in South Africa, the most developed nation in sub-Saharan Africa, over three-quarters of books sold are published by foreign multinational companies. Ownership patterns in the rest of the industry reflect the legacy of apartheid: 15 percent of book sales originate with white-owned South African publishers, and only 8 percent from local black publishing companies.

“The ownership and economic participation of black people in the (publishing) industry is dismal and continues to dwindle, even ten years after freedom (from apartheid),” African Publishing Review noted.

One reason is that only about 10 percent of the South African population regularly buys and reads books, according to the country’s Department of Education. And, thanks in part to the ruinous effects of the education given to blacks under apartheid, the current book-buying public consists almost entirely of whites. The tastes of this group thus tend to influence what is published.

“Consumer choice dictates what is put out by publishers. It is like any other business. What is needed is a black cross-over author to dominate the best seller list, the way Nelson Mandela did with his autobiography (‘A Long Walk to Freedom’),” says Cynthia Brown, a bookseller in the Sandton suburb of Johannesburg – South Africa’s economic capital.

With the economics of book publishing being what they are, what are the chances that NEPAD-oriented books would find a market or readership?

“There is no mass appeal for a NEPAD book per se, but the themes of empowerment of Africans and women, and poverty reduction, can be handled imaginatively in both non-fiction and fiction books. People will read well-crafted stories,” says Brown.

Adds publisher Brian Wafawarow, “One hindrance to the objectives of NEPAD will be how little African people know about each other, and the negative perceptions that have been emphasised at the expense of African civilisation, its contribution to the world and the interconnectedness of African people and their common destiny.”

Despite being a critic of colonialism, Wafawarow says one positive legacy of the colonial era is the fact that English, French and Portuguese have established themselves as common languages on the continent – which makes communication in Africa simpler.

Internet publishing, although it is supported by APNET, awaits the widespread usage of computers on a continent whose telecommunications have been hobbled by poverty and infrastructural shortcomings – such as erratic electricity supplies. That leaves traditional paper-bound books for the dissemination of ideas.

Industry sources said that as the NEPAD goals of poverty alleviation and communication between nations are met, African publishers who play a role in propagating these goals will benefit.

“It is obvious that because of cultural affinity between African countries, cross-cultural fertilisation will aid development faster in all areas of book development and movement,” notes publishing consultant Otunba Yinka Lawal-Solarin.

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