A Review of London Book Fair 2025

SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL: AFRICA’S INDEPENDENT BOOK PUBLISHERS

By Olatoun Gabi-Williams

Africa can comfortably accommodate the US, China, India and most of Europe combined. The entirety of South America could also fit into Africa with room to spare. Greenland is 14 times smaller than Africa despite wild exaggerations about its size. The vastness of the continent makes the contrast with the panel title, Small Is Beautiful, intriguing.  

In her welcome address, panel chair, Stephanie Kitchen, Executive Director of African Books Collective (ABC), explained that the title was a recognition of the “cottage industry” aspect of much of African publishing and a nod to the title of E.F Schumacher’s famous book which emphasized an “economics as if people matter”. 

By framing the talk in this way, the curators were recognizing that many independent African publishers are family businesses or very small academic programs. Given the relationship between the UK and the Commonwealth, Anglophone countries of Africa, I felt it was regrettable that only one session dedicated to Africa publishing should exist on the rich LBF 2025 program. But perhaps it is for the African publishers to initiate these requests. 

That this panel took place, we must thank Angus Philips, Editor-in-Chief of Logos (Brill) who conceived it as a complement to the eponymously titled special edition of the periodical. https://brill.com/view/journals/logo/35/2-3/article-p5_1.xml 

Taking place on the final day, 13th March, the panel looked and felt like an anomaly. That it had been included by the London Book Fair appeared to be no more than a nod to evident demographic shifts in global publishing. Shifts facilitated in no small measure by the digital revolution in communications. The entire event looked like the global industry slowly acknowledging the inching rise of Africa as a relevant hub of publishing activity. 

At 10.15 am it was perhaps too early for many. The empty seats in the Olympia Theatre were a contrast with the crammed fair’s halls we had grown to expect. I was happy to see fellow Nigerians in the audience: Dare Oluwatuyi is Chairman of the Nigeria International Book Fair Trust and President of the Booksellers Assocation of Nigeria. Segun Martins Fajemisin who kindly took the photographs supporting this section of my article, is founder and CIO at Infomediaworks, a publishing and information management company based in London.

 Goretti Kyomuhendo is the founder of African Writers Trust which seeks to bring together and coordinate African writers in the Diaspora and writers on the continent. She is also CEO at MirembE Literary Agency, an outfit also involved in publishing. 

 She began her speech lauding the vibrancy of the publishing landscape, mentioning Rwanda’s Huza Press and Nigeria’s Narrative Landscape Press as examples of the new dynamism. An enumeration of obstacles to progress followed, the main ones being economic constraints and distributional barriers. With such infrastructural poverty, she said, the work of indie publishers can seem punishing.

 Mary Jay has worked on two important Africa focused book prizes: The Caine Prize for African Writing aims to recognize and celebrate outstanding short stories by African writers published in English, and to promote African literature globally. Established in 1979, the NOMA Award for Publishing in Africa ran a stellar campaign for 29 years. Until it ceased operations in 2009, the prize recognized outstanding African writers and scholars published in Africa. 

 I was unable to listen to Jay’s presentation, but panel chair, Stephanie Kitchen, shared her notes. Jay draws attention to the global recognition of African literature, referencing the generational changes on the landscape wrought by the digital age. She points to the audio-books sector and self-publishing as “a newer challenge for African Books Collective (ABC)”. Jay is a founding director of ABC, likely the world’s largest marketing and distribution company dedicated to books published in Africa. 

Visit: https://www.africanbookscollective.com/

The usual suspects come up in Jay’s notes: the need to overcome distributional barriers, difficulty in achieving financial sustainability, asking rhetorically if in that context “small is beautiful”. 

 To learn more about African publishing, the real hope and the hurdles left to scale, read my review of the Africa Rising conference held in Nairobi in 2019 and hosted by the International Publisher’s Association: 

https://bordersliteratureonline.net/eventdetails/IPANairobi-Seminar

 Jama put economic bottlenecks on the backburner. An Italy-trained ethno-mathematician, writer and scholar, he returned to Somaliland with a purpose: to participate in the healing of his motherland. Declared an independent nation in 1991, after a brutal 4-year conflict, Somaliland is still reeling from wounds inflicted by the ongoing Somali Civil War. Jama’s approach to the arts and culture agenda is human, people-centered. He asserts that arts and culture are crucial tools for rebuilding post-conflict nations and that to take the arts out of nation building, is to take the human out of it. 

To advance his cause, Jama has established the Red Sea Cultural Foundation, (Ponte Invisibile), which delivers various programs including: publishing and specializing in the translation of literary and scholarly works into indigenous Somali languages; documenting and preserving Somali cultural heritage, including oral traditions and historical archives; fostering cultural exchange and collaboration between Somali and international artists, writers, and intellectuals. In 2008, he founded the world-renowned Hargeysa International Book Fair. 

 Let me quote Stephanie Kitchen: “It is often the contributions of exceptional individuals that make the difference” 

 Jama Musse Jama is one of those individuals and a shining exponent of the “reverse migrant” foregrounded in an article titled, Africa’s Defining Decade: Embracing the Return of the Diaspora by JP Følsgaard Bak. To the Danish industrialist: 

“…the first wave of returning Africans holds immense potential – not just as skilled professionals, but as investors and builders of the future. If empowered, they can drive the development of essential infrastructure, creating jobs and reinforcing Africa’s reputation as a land of opportunity” (The Habari Network) 

Reverse migration. Listening to Jama speak fluent Italian to Italian speakers just before the session, floodlights what to me is an inspiring challenge to traditional notions of citizenship. The way he moves between his native Somaliland and his almost-native Italy, reminds us that for many Africans, citizenship is increasingly dynamic, less tied to a specific-nation state. He embodies an important truth about 21st century urban African identities: increasingly fluid and complex, with growing populations in our cities embracing plural identities, be it across ethnic groups, across national, regional or global borders. 

 To learn more about Jama Musse Jama’s views and his work in Somaliland read my wide-ranging conversation with him here: 

https://bordersliteratureonline.net/globaldetail/jama_musse

 This article was first published on Borders: Literature for all Nations