What I am interested in is how we create what I am calling the African archival future which will then form part of a global archive. Publishing for … - Bibi Bakare-Yusuf

Will they find only the record of African writing that has been served up from the conveyor belt of large corporate and indie publishing houses of western metropolis? Will some of the mediocre writing that is currently being peddled as the pinnacle of African excellence and genius by the legitimatising authority of the west be the only thing they have to subsist on and account for as our own contribution to civilisation and to the global archive of ideas? Or will they only find the realist tradition of writing bequeathed to us from the Achebe generation?

African literature today is still struggling to emerge from the shadow of that 1962 conference, which according to Mukoma, set in motion the hegemony of the realist tradition in African literature. The realist tradition inaugurated by the Makerere Brotherhood (and yes, we can talk in terms of brotherhood because only two female writers were present) not only disregarded and arrested the growth of writing in African languages, it curtailed the growth of writing styles and flights of fancy that may be more attuned to some of the fantastical wanderings of nocturnal storytelling traditions that many may be familiar with.

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.