‘Action Plans’ to Support the African Book Industries: Current Initiatives in Progress, and an Inventory of Earlier Projects

Over the past eight years or more there have been a wide range of projects to support the African book industries and the book sector generally. This has included a series of ambitious 'action plans' that followed a number of high-level conferences held in Africa.

This investigation by Hans Zell, to be published in The African Book Publishing Record (vol. 50, issue 4, 2024) in November this year, offers a summary of initiatives in progress and their current status as at September 2024. Together with an inventory of past projects and reference resources designed to support African publishing and the book sector (1969-2024).

In his summing-up, Zell states that over the last ten years or more there have been an ambitious range of new initiatives, elaborate action plans, and mega-conferences to address the challenges and realising the opportunities for the African book industries. Almost invariably, some of these conferences are usually described as having been "a great success."

Sadly, on the evidence of his investigation at least, he says that some of these major, mostly high-level action plans have yet to be implemented. In some cases, it would appear that a number of the projects have been quietly dropped, and enquiries about their current status did not elicit a response.

In an 2021 interview, Gbadega Adedapo, a prominent Nigerian publisher and former President of the Nigerian Publishers Association (NPA), he talked about the 'Lagos Action Plan' that emerged as a result of the International Publishers Association's Seminar held in Lagos in May 2018; its objectives, progress about its implementation, and achieving its goals. From this interview we learnt that the execution process and implementation of action plans is not apparently without its challenges: While Adedapo stated that he did not foresee any obstacles "other than gaining the full support of stakeholders on actions and rapid response as may be required to make progress with the designed programmes", they [the NPA] needed "to keep pushing and pressing for submissions for a survey of no more than 10-15 minutes [to complete]", and they had to extend the submission deadline. This he said, is "why we continue to urge book industry players in Africa to offer these programmes their responsiveness. Without their responsiveness, nothing will be achieved. Nothing."

Meantime numerous challenges remain, some of which have persisted for decades, despite several assistance programmes, and various attempts at getting book industry players to work together. Over the past 30 or more years, many pan-African or regional organizations, programmes, and other initiatives in the book sector have failed, despite their best intentions.

José Borghino, Secretary General of the IPA said: "The engagement from African publishers associations with IPA has never been higher but these Action Plans haven't yet given us the results we hoped for. We will keep working with our members to see how we can best support African publishing. We need effective book policies to be in place that drive cultures of reading for pleasure and, alongside that, supportive copyright and enforcement regimes so that publishers can invest in local authors."

It can be described as a failure of collective will among African publishers, Zell suggests, as well as a failure to make their activities widely known. "Regrettably, the African book sector still remains seriously fragmented, despite numerous major conferences and their subsequent action plans."

However, Zell adds, this is not to suggest that African publishing has not made great strides over the last three decades or more. The book industry has seen significant growth, and there have been many encouraging developments. But that growth, he argues, has not come as a result of such conferences, and their 'action plans'. It has largely come as a result of innovation and enterprise, and the vision and energy of individual African publishers; and one very positive development is that much progress has been made in gender equality in African publishing in recent years, which has seen the emergence of a whole new generation of agile and visionary women publishers. "Who, it could be said, are changing the face of African publishing."