Mkuki na Nyota is an independent publishing house, founded in 1981 in response to the absence of quality local publishing in Tanzania. We put a series of questions about the independence of African literature to the head of the publishing house.
Four decades on from its founding, what are the main lessons you’ve drawn from the experience, and what do you consider the most significant threat to the spirit of independence that gave rise to your publishing house?
One of the main lessons we’ve learned is that passion and a deep commitment to your mission are perhaps the greatest sources of resilience. They are what sustains you through financial difficulties and the many other challenges you encounter along the way. That sense of mission becomes a kind of compass, a constant reminder of why you do this work. In a way, it’s also a form of silent capital.
Publishing is a demanding field, and even more so in Africa. We contend with piracy, with the limits of the reading market, and with growing competition for people’s attention from social media, streaming platforms and, by now, content generated by artificial intelligence. In a context like this, commitment to the mission is part of what keeps an institution alive.
At the same time, I think financial pressure is perhaps the greatest threat to independence. An independent publisher has to constantly balance the freedom to choose what to publish with the need to remain financially sustainable. That pressure can push you to publish only commercially attractive projects, or to depend on pre-financed projects in which the funder can influence the work. The challenge, then, is to stay financially sustainable without letting economic necessity completely dictate your editorial choices.
You publish in both English and Kiswahili, and you recently translated into Kiswahili a novel by Nobel laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah — a Tanzanian writer who writes in English for British publishers. Does the question of the language in which literary works are produced and circulated strike you as a paradox, or rather as something that reveals the deeper structures of the publishing industry?
Before winning the Nobel Prize, Abdulrazak Gurnah was not very well known in Tanzania. He has written extensively about Tanzania, Zanzibar and the East African coast, but his novels were written in English and published mainly through the British publishing industry.
Tanzania, on the other hand, is a predominantly Kiswahili-speaking society, and much of the literature consumed by the majority of the population is in Kiswahili. Language thus became a boundary between his work and many of the readers closest to the places and experiences he wrote about. The broader paradox is that African writers who work in English or French have access to far larger publishing industries and infrastructures than those who write in African languages. As a result, literature in these languages often has greater chances of international circulation and recognition. But what possibilities for international recognition exist for an African writer who writes in an African language? How does the international literary world discover and evaluate works written in Kiswahili or other African languages? Does it really have the infrastructure, the translations and the networks needed even just to become aware of these works?
These questions reflect the legacy of colonialism and the inequalities still present in cultural power. Western institutions continue to have considerable influence over which authors are recognized, translated, awarded and admitted into the global literary canon. Language, then, is not simply a means of expression. It is also about access, circulation and, ultimately, who holds the power to grant visibility and recognition.
You launched Digidigi (https://mkukinanyota.com/digidigi-audiobook-platform/), an audiobook platform. Do you believe digital technologies and proprietary platforms can act as a lever to reduce dependence on English-language publishing circuits, or is there a risk of replicating online the same power asymmetries that characterize the physical market?
I think this is less a question of technology in itself and more a question of how we reach, grow and cultivate our audience.
Much of the publishing infrastructure that developed in Africa grew up around educational publishing and the ready-made market created by schools and curricula. The priority was largely to extract commercial value from that market, rather than to build a holistic, sustainable literary ecosystem capable of nurturing writers, forming readers, promoting different kinds of writing and building a culture around literature.
If we limit ourselves to using digital technologies to reproduce those existing models, we risk carrying the same limitations over into a new environment. The opportunity that digital technology offers isn’t simply to digitize publishing, but to rethink the literary infrastructure around the realities of the audience we want to serve. For us, that means starting from Tanzania, where we’re based, and then extending to East Africa and the wider region. We have to understand how people actually access and consume stories, particularly underserved audiences. How does someone in a rural area, with no access to a bookshop, come into contact with literature? What technologies and payment systems do people already use and trust?
But access alone isn’t enough. We also have to cultivate literature as an art form and a cultural activity, beyond the purely utilitarian idea of reading as a means of acquiring knowledge. That means creating spaces where readers and writers can meet, where books can be discussed, staged and celebrated, and where communities can grow around literature. Digital platforms can be part of this ecosystem, alongside physical initiatives such as readings, author events and literary gatherings.
We have to build distribution and business models around these realities, while at the same time creating systems that fairly reward creators and support the literary ecosystem as a whole. If we start from the audience and the culture we want to cultivate, rather than from technology in itself, I think we have a much better chance of creating something sustainable. It is technology that has to follow the needs of the audience, not the other way around.
In the long term, what kind of alliance do you consider essential to preserving the autonomy of African publishing: greater cooperation among publishers across the continent, stronger public policy, independent distribution networks, or new economic models?
I think the most important thing is stronger cooperation among African publishers across the continent. This can include co-publishing agreements that make it easier for stories to circulate across borders, as well as greater cooperation on rights deals, both within the same language and through translation. This would broaden the range of literature available in African markets and allow stories published in one part of the continent to reach readers in another. Many of us face similar challenges, and we are in a stronger position if we work together to solve them.
How can we move physical books across borders more efficiently? Could publishers share files and print locally in different markets rather than shipping books over long distances? What models can we develop together to make the circulation of African literature more sustainable?
Independent distribution networks are important, but I believe many of these structures can emerge from stronger collaboration among publishers. For me, collaboration is the foundation. Greater autonomy will come from building relationships and practical systems that allow our books, our languages and our stories to circulate more freely across the continent.