As every literate people in this country know, Ethiopia is not a very literate society by any standards. One of the reasons why I came to this conclusion is my recent visit of various websites to see where Ethiopia and Africa stood as far as book publishing is concerned. I first went to Wikipedia encyclopedia, perhaps the best reference site available on the Internet, to see the ranks of countries according to their publishing achievements. I was not only surprised by not finding Ethiopia among the countries according to the titles of books they publish every year. Accordingly, or it may be expected the United States is on top of the list of so many countries.
The United States publishes 275, 232 new titles and re-editions followed by China 208, 418 new titles while the United Kingdom ranks third with 188 new titles and re-editions published every year. The first African country on the list is Egypt with 35,000 new titles published in a year while followed by South Africa with 5,418 new titles, Morocco 3677 titles, Eritrea with 970 new titles, Kenya 300 new titles, Uganda 288 new titles while Ethiopia ranks 97th with 240 new titles followed by Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Madagascar and Benin.
In order to see how Africa is backward in the field of annual book publishing, one has to add all the books published in Africa and compare it with the first three countries that hold the top spot. Book publishing can serve not only to gauge the level of growth of the publishing industry but also that of the level of literacy and cultural development. The more a country publishes books, the more its people read. The more the people read, the more they have a higher level of consciousness and awareness of events and developments. So, while book publishing is directly an indicator of economic standards it is also an indicator of cultural and literacy levels.
By the way, Ethiopia’s rank is not the last or the worst in the list as Ghana ranks 121st on the list with 28 new titles published every year while Libya ranks 122nd, while Angola, Mali, Burkina Faso and Gambia holds the final ranks on the list. More than economic levels, the growth of book publishing indicates the level of literacy and culture. One example is Oman, which is in the Middle East and economically more developed than most African countries while ranking last on the list with only 7 new book titles published in the year the data was collected.
In an article by Roberto Falvo entitled, “Is African Publishing Catching up?” where the author outlines some of the challenges African publishing is facing a present. One the challenges of publishing in Africa is the fact that, “Publishing got off to a slow start. Colonial rulers passed laws to make sure they owned the rights to any books written by African authors. It wasn’t until countries started gaining independence in the 1970’s and 1980s’, that African publishers could finally start to own their stories.”
The second challenge is the fact that “A lot of knowledge is passed on orally from generation to generation; so many fascinating stories haven’t spread beyond villages, regions or countries. African authors are now writing down these stories and oral histories…It’s important that people are able to read and share their own stories and histories. So, with hundreds of different dialects and languages across Africa, books need to be published in the original language as well as in English.”
The writer quotes an example of African writing that achieved success by quoting from “Devil on the Cross” an early novel by Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Tiongo. She says that, “Devil on the Cross (1982) was first written by Ngugi wa Thiongo in the Agikuyu language spoken by the largest ethnic group in Kenya. It tells the tragic story of Wariinga, a young woman who moves from a rural Kenyan town to the capital, Nairobi, only to be exploited by her boss and later by a corrupt businessman. As she struggles to survive, she discovers that much of her misfortune stems from Western, capitalist influences on her country.”
Among the last challenge African publishing is facing are, according to Flavo, “lack of infrastructure, such as roads for transportation and reliable communications to market and promote new authors and books.” According to her, “publishing in Africa is still in its infancy, but with the help of publishing associations, such as in Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa, they are rapidly working-out how to best overcome its unique challenges and shape its identity”.
Ethiopia is a country with a unique literary and cultural history and with a record time for starting to publish books in the traditional way. “A study published in the International Information and Library Review, the author of the article Metikou Ourgay writes about the history of publishing in Ethiopia between 1500-1900 saying that, “During this period numerous ecclesiastical and a few original works by Ethiopians and foreigners had appeared in Ge’ez and in other dialects.
Ethiopia is also a leading African country for promoting literacy as early as in the 1960s when most African countries were languishing under colonial rule. “The printing press was established during the reign of empress Zewditu while Emperor Haile Sellassie was crown prince. It is now one of the biggest and most sophisticated printing presses in the country.”
Although Ethiopia boasts of a long history of book publishing, many African countries have progressed with formidable speed while Ethiopia somehow retrogressed in the field of book publishing. This was in turn due to many factors such as the general economic backwardness of the country, the failure of modernization of the educational system, the state of from of speech that was mostly deplorable in the past, and the lack of political and social stability that did not help the development of publishing as well as the freedom of expression.
Ethiopia’s retardation in book publishing is also the product as well as the result of retardation in the culture of book reading and writing as well as the lack of talents in creative writing. Ethiopia is an early starter in literary development and one of the few countries that have their own scripts but she is one of the most backward in terms of literary production. The country has not yet produced a single author with creativity that matches those of other Africans in other African countries.
Nigeria has produced many top notch authors like Chinua Achebe and Ben Okri, Kenya authors like Ngugi and South Africa has many internationally awarded authors including Nobel Laureates while Ethiopia has none. We cannot blame the absence of a vigorous publishing industry because literary success does not always depend on economic levels of development. Many poor countries have produced many outstanding authors.
With the development of publishing technology, many African countries including Ethiopia are discovering new opportunities for publishing online and by other means than traditional publishing tools. As we saw above, book distribution is also another headache for African publishing industry. This challenge is also being alleviated thanks to the emergence of online and e-book publishing and distribution companies. The new challenge may be that African writer, publishers and all the actors in the industry are not yet taking full advantage of the technological opportunities.
The trend in Ethiopia is that what we usually call traditional publishers are no more operating as many if not all of them have closed their offices due to many challenges. Those publish books are individual publishers that have no offices and function is an informal way by buying manuscripts from authors and taking them to the printers and publishing as well as distributing them on their own. This is clearly a backward step as compared to the well-organized traditional publishers of yesteryears that have now disappeared from the scene.
As a result, many authors, particularly the emerging ones resort to self-publishing whenever they can collect the cost need for publishing their books. But this practice too has a serious drawback because most of them are unable to distribute their books and are often condemned to financial disasters. Most of them are frustrated and forced to withdraw from this kind of informal publishing a well as self-publishing sooner than later, vowing not to return in the future.
The general poverty of Ethiopian writers coupled with the absence of organizations that could assist their efforts, including official cultural institutions, are additional drawbacks that reduce their mighty efforts to naught. In this atmosphere of intimidation fear and absence of any kind of state sponsorship of art and culture in general, Ethiopian writers are left to decide their fates on their own, if at all they have hope in the future.
The situation in African book publishing inevitably looks grim. How long the situation remains unchanged is anyone’s guess. Nevertheless book publishing will continue to be precarious as long as books are written by amateur writes who do not care about having their works edited by professional editors and published by modern publishing houses and the level of their writings remain deplorable if not horrible because of the absence of professional editors. For many of if not all writers, the prospect of living on the proceeds of their works still remain a remote if not an unattainable possibility. And the prospect of competing with their African literary peers in the global arena is becoming a dream gone wrong. Many decades after the end of colonialism, African countries still languish in the dark tunnels of international cultural development. Neocolonialism may be one culprit but our own laziness and lack of incentive are also to blame. The low level of attention African leaders give to cultural matters is also a factor in the retardation of the continent’s cultural and literary development; something that may be overcome with greater commitment that is lacking at present.
BY MULUGETA GUDETA
The Ethiopian Herald 8 May 2022
