We have to talk about and acknowledge the unseen infrastructure that ensures that books are in circulation, because books, unlike print media or blog… - Bibi Bakare-Yusuf

It is publishers who take stories from their raw state and turn them into food, food that may nourish or poison us. We have to talk about and acknowledge the unseen infrastructure that ensures that books are in circulation, because books, unlike print media or blogs, offer us some of the densest, extended, and interpretive conversations we can have about the world around us.

There are some infrastructure challenges but they are challenges that I see as opportunities. In Nigeria and across the continent, you have a publisher, who is also the distributor, who also warehouses the book, who is also doing the bookselling as well. But that is an opportunity because it means that we also have a direct relationship with consumers.

I am so happy to be here today. To be on this stage and to share the Abantu vision. Before I begin, I want to say thank you, thank you for inviting me. I always feel I am home when I am here. Joburg is my second home. London is my first and Nigeria, my third home.

We must take ourselves more seriously and value what we do, even the minutia action and document. There’s no other time in history then now when archival creation is available to us all. All of us can contribute to the archive. We do not have to wait for the great archival institutions of the past which are usually controlled and organised by government institutions or some royal court record keepers. The time is now!