By Mwalimu George Ngwane
"If Education is the road out of poverty, then books are the wheels needed for the journey" - Richard Crabbe, (Ghanaian Publisher)
Preface
Books represent the mirror of every society; they showcase the immortal lore and mores of a people, they act as a publicity stunt for a nation since they go beyond the atavistic modes of cultural folklore.
The book sector in Africa poses some great concerns that necessitate a clinical diagnosis of its state and future. This diagnosis is of particular import because a man-made book famine is systemically gaining currency in Africa’s cultural landscape.
Professional initiative
The pot of a book sector rests on the five firestones of reading, writing, publishing, marketing and purchasing. The function of authorship is to conceptualise the idea in written form, publishing reshapes it into a more readable form, targeted at a particular readership. Next the printer manufactures bound books for distribution and marketing. In concrete terms, a book sector comprises readers, writers, book sellers, publishers, printers, literary agents, Librarians, illustrators, archivists etc. Each book sector needs to be active in order to make the book chain completely functional. Books are primarily the reserve of the civil society and non-state actors have more stakes in building a sustainable book culture than government and the International community. The first professional initiative needed in the book industry is the setting up of book-related Associations. Without professional interest and solidarity, without the libido and passion for books, without a coordinated and harmonized approach to overhauling the rustic wheel of the book machinery first by the book professionals them selves, the book industry in Africa is in danger of succumbing to the pangs of liquidation.
Public partnership
The book industry like every sphere of our national life needs both national patronage and international partnership (institutional support). To quote the Malawian writer, Paul Tiyambe Zeleza “Books constitute crucial repositories of social memories and imaginations, containing the accumulated cultural capital of society, of its accomplishments, agonies and aspirations. Books therefore are not and cannot be a luxury, a dispensable dessert on the menu of development, nationhood, or human progress.” Yet the African book industry is still to find patronage with the business elite or company cultural ideologies. Granted, countries like Uganda, Kenya, Ghana, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Senegal and Cote d’Ivoire have some measure of success in international support but what has happened to the once vibrant book fairs that used to make these countries the international meeting place and market place of ideas? It is no secret that Cameroon’s music industry stands tall basically because there are individuals producing musicians; the Nigerian film industry (Nollywood) has made a free rise success due to the intervention of a nationalistic business class stamping their trade mark on the country’s cultural identity. It is not the same with the book industry that has to rely so much on its own stakeholders. Project proposals on book development have had very revolting response mechanisms
Government responsibility
Government concern for the book industry anywhere is crucial to the book development of any country. While opening the Nairobi International Book Fair in 2003, the then Kenyan Minister for Education, Science and Technology, Professor George Saitoti had this to say “Let us strive to make publication and dissemination of information part of our culture so that we may use the medium to address our own agenda as developing nations”. The idea of Book Development Councils world wide was conceived by UNESCO after the Second World War under the slogan “Peace through Education”. The goal was for these councils to coordinate and stimulate the activities of government and private sector agencies in the development of a Book industry of each country to the end that more and better books of all kinds may be available at the lowest possible costs to readers of all ages through out the country”. Unfortunately UNESCO’s initial financial support to the early created Book Councils waned away and most Book Councils in Africa ran out of steam.
What all of these indicate is that African governments now have a large menu to invite book professionals (private and public) to discuss on the way forward of the book industry through National Book Forums. Indeed an enabling book environment in most African countries has not only produced knowledge for national growth but has broken the barriers of our continental macho society to produce women voices that hold their own in the comity of world scholarship. I am thinking of Veronique Tadjo of Cote d’voire, Ama Ata Aidoo of Ghana, Yvonne Vera of Zimbabwe, Mariama Ba of Senegal, Assia Djeba of Algeria, Nawal El Saadawi of Eygpt, Buchi Emecheta of Nigeria, Bessie Head of South Africa, all of whose books were selected among Africa’s best books of the twentieth century. I am also thinking of the Nobel laureate of literature Nadine Godiner of South Africa; the 2003 Caine Prize winner, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor of Kenya; and the 2003 Noma Award laureate Elinor Sisulu of South Africa.
Conclusion
Often times one hears the lame excuse that Africa’s oral tradition deprives it from the culture of the written word. We said the same thing about a film culture until Nollywood took all of us by storm. Another flimsy excuse is that with the annihilation of our purchasing power due to external greed and internal graft, books are a luxurious commodity in the market of survival. True as it may be for a teeming lot concerned with bread and butter issues, it is not the case with a prebendal elite obsessed with the ostentations exhibition of obscene opulence. It is a matter of individual priority, community interest and national vision.
Finally, books are like any other industry, with a market that is constantly growing and which could generate jobs. And in these melancholic moments of structural adjustment programmes and global economic crisis, a revamped indigenous book industry in Africa could as well be another economic lifeline.
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