By Karungi Kwatampora
It’s next to impossible to engage in Africa’s publishing sector without running across the name Henry Chakava. Mr. Chakava, who passed away on March 08, 2024, aged 77, was the chairman of the East Africa Education Publishers —Africa’s first indigenous publishing house, a lifelong advocate for indigenous publishing on the continent, and a champion of its role in preserving African cultures and languages.
Mr Chakava, a pioneer in Africa’s publishing sector, began his illustrious career in book publishing, spanning five decades, when he was recruited by Alan Hill for Heinemann Educational Books (HEB) in 1972. Joining the editorial team for Heinemann’s African Writers Series (AWS), he worked with the series editors including Chinua Achebe, Alan Hill and James Curry.
Started in 1962, AWS quickly emerged as a leading platform for publication of the works of African writers and was responsible for bringing the works of writers including Chinua Achebe, Buchi Emecheta, Wole Soyinka, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, Rebeka Njau, Ama Ata Aidoo and more to international audiences. Over its nearly forty-year run (1962 – 2003) the AWS produced 359 books with several of these books winning different literary prizes on the continent and globally such as the Commonwealth Prize and the Caine Prize for African Writing and featured the six African authors to win the Nobel Prize for literature; Wole Soyinka (1986), Naguib Mahfouz (1988), Nadine Gordimer (1991), J.M. Coetzee (2003), Doris Lessing (2007), and Abdulrazak Gurnah (2021). At a 2002 celebration of the 100 best books of the twentieth century, 12 of the selected titles were from the Series, marking how influential the Series was to the development of Africa’s literary and publishing sector.
In 1976 Mr Chakava was the new Managing publisher at HEB East Africa. Over the next few years, he was instrumental in advocating for the formation of the African Book Collective. Beginning in 1989, the collective, set up with the financial support of Sida and contributions of £ 1,000 from each of the 17 founding publishers, was set to market and distribute African published books worldwide, outside Africa. Any publisher on the continent understands that the sustainability of indigenous publishing is hinged on the expansion of the market for the continent’s publishing products.
To do so, in its 25-year run, the African Book Collective has made African literature more accessible to global audiences while mitigating the prohibitive costs of getting the physical books into these markets. The collective has the largest catalogue of books by African writers from the continent and diaspora across a broad section of genres from literary to academic and to children’s books.
In 1992, twenty years after joining Heinemann Education Books, Mr Chakava oversaw the indigenisation process of HEB East Africa. Together with a group of local entrepreneurs, he bought a majority stake in the company which went on to become the East African Educational Publishers (EAEP), the first indigenous publishing house in Africa with offices in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.
Crucial to this start was that Mr Chakava negotiated for East African Education Publishers to retain the publishing rights for several of the HEB East Africa authors like Ngugi wa Thiong’o. This not only strengthened the position of the new House but protected the authors’ interests, giving them more publishing freedom. Others like David Maillu would publish popular fiction that resonated with the masses as it was locally sourced and contextualised.
Three decades since the first indigenous publishing house opened its doors, the literary and publishing sector in Africa has come a long way. It has weathered the often-antagonistic competition with foreign multinationals which maintained a stranglehold on the sector for its first two decades and were more concerned with the repatriation of profits to home accounts and with publishing foreign-produced content. The sector emerged through the turbulent years of civil strife across the continent as African countries sought flag-independence and the nation-building processes that followed thereafter were characterised by the stifling of voices deemed critical to the ruling parties. Several authors like Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Wole Soyinka and others faced imprisonment and others like Ken Saro Wiwa were killed during this period.
The sector has weathered the impact of the structural adjustment reforms of the 80s and the economic downturns of the early to mid-2000s, poor government support characterised by low public funding, regressive national book policies and poor infrastructure and socio-economic constraints like low book reading and purchase rates due to low literacy rates and high poverty rates. The rapid technological advancements have seen an alarming increase in piracy and copyright infringement, further compromising any gains to be made in the sector. Despite these challenges, indigenous publishing in Africa is still vibrant and growing albeit dependent on private sector financing, patronage and donor support.
A myriad of indigenous publishing outfits exist across Africa today reportedly earning USD 1 billion annually by 2016. As we celebrate the rise in popularity of African Literature globally, which to some would appear to be a passing trend, the flavour of the moment, we recognise that this is a culmination of the groundwork laid by early indigenous publishers like Mr Chakava.
As a publishing house, we look to their efforts as we create a publishing platform for African writers writing from the continent. Our actions are galvanised by the understanding that writers based on the continent are often faced with a lack of access to professional publishing structures and are thus not able to access professional editorial support, training in the craft of creative writing, professional designers, and marketing and distribution support to bring their titles to wider audiences. And are therefore not able to compete fairly in the publishing market.
To attend to this, we are building linkages with partners, local and global, along the publishing chain (book and digital publishing) to empower these writers with these resources. We are committed to providing these writers with the tools to grow their craft, improve the editorial quality and production of their titles and provide them with publishing channels to bring their work to a wider audience. In addressing the challenges of lack of access, we aim to also address that of proximity. That the writer doesn’t have to be unhomed to access professional publishing structures or more vibrant markets for their titles.
We are excited by the response to our projects including Ibua Journal, a literary magazine that receives submissions from across the continent; Ibua Labs, a space for training writers on the continent in the craft of creative writing and editing, recently launching the Ibua Manuscript project as a vehicle to enhance this training, as well as Ibua Series; our imprint publishing trade books and children’s books.
We are excited to see the fruit of this as writers that have gone through our doors such as Charles Muhumuza, Famous Chukwuemeka and others find their footing and achieve literary success in their home countries and internationally. We were also thrilled to receive 37 novel submissions from East African writers writing from the continent in response to the Ibua 2024 Call for Novel Manuscripts. The eight longlisted writers will receive guided craft and editorial development support led by Billy Kahora, renowned author and editor and co-founder of Saseni! A creative writing teaching space based in Nairobi, Kenya.
Indigenous literature and publishing are crucial to the knowledge formation of any society. The indigenous publisher is crucial to this process. It’s imperative for governments to support them and provide conducive atmospheres for the sector to grow and thrive through promotion of appropriate national book policies, funding public libraries, having appropriate language policies that promote publishing in indigenous languages and curbing piracy and copyright infringement.
In a 1999 article, “Dealing with the British”, reprinted in the Bellagio Publishing Network, Chakava declared the future of publishing in Africa as African. We couldn’t argue with that. Nearly thirty years on, the future of publishing in Africa is still African. We commend all those promoting and advocating for Africa’s indigenous publishing.
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