So, we have to stop thinking of the archive merely as that which is past, we have to think of it simultaneously as past, present and future. We have … - Bibi Bakare-Yusuf

The archive as a reservoir of and for memory is the place where ideas and material culture of historic interest or social relevance are stored and ordered. It is where society warehouses what it wants to remember and what it sees as worthy of remembrance, especially for the future. Whether that archive is of literature, music, visual art, film, plastic art, buildings, I am interested in what future people will find that gives them a record, a sense of this present moment.

So today, I want to talk about why, despite its many ups and down, I am a publisher. I am a publisher because I love stories. I am a publisher because I love ideas and I think ideas and words can change the content of our mind and transform our worlds and the norms we live by. I am a publisher because I like power, especially enabling and productive power which we must embrace. Finally, I am a publisher because I am interested in the future. I am interested in contributing to and helping to shape what people in 100, 200 or even 500 years’ will be discussing and mulling over when they take a walk into the labyrinth of their past that is our present moment. I am interested in how we can create the archive of the future in the present.

It is through books that we come to learn and read about each other as Africans across our differences and continue to have a reason to gather (as we are here today) so that we can salivate over the apparent genius of the solitary writer while we sublimate the collective geniuses (the editor, book designer, proof reader, copy editor, publicist, sales people, indexer, the literary critic, the blogger, instagramer etc.) that are involved in the production of any one book for the celebration of the singular authorial voice.