LONDON -- Twenty years after a group of publishers gathered to discuss how to get African ideas on the West's agenda, a gathering at the British Parliament offered a measure of how much they have accomplished.\nThe recent London Book Fair brought British journalists', lawmakers' and Africans' hands together for the launch of "African Voices on Development and Social Justice," the latest offering of the African Books Collective.\n"We're saying, 'Listen to Africa,'" said Mary Jay, who runs the day-to-day business of the Oxford-based collective on behalf of the African publishers who own it.\nThe essays in "African Voices" address many of the issues facing the world's poorest continent: debt, disease, a dearth of democracy. British Prime Minister Tony Blair has made improving Africa's plight a priority in 2005, vowing to put it high on the agenda of this summer's Group of Eight summit of top industrialized powers, which Britain will coordinate.\nThe scholarly papers contained in "African Voices" offer a high-profile basis for discussion as the world turns its attention to Africa.\n"We wanted to have our work recognized and known outside our own countries," said Walter Bgoya, a writer, collective founder and the publisher of the book.\nHe and the 16 other publishers who gathered in 1985 had been trying to sell their books in the West with the help of well-meaning contacts who had an interest in Africa but no experience in book publishing or distribution. Deadlines weren't met and bills weren't paid, leaving all sides frustrated. In the end, Bgoya said, the publishers decided to do it themselves.\nFour years after their initial meeting, Jay, who had worked for a British publisher specializing in African studies, opened their nonprofit venture, which at first was active only in Europe. In 2003, Michigan State University began distributing the collective's list, opening the North American market.\nA committee of the 17 founders makes policy, while all the publisher members -- now 102 -- get a chance to sell books abroad. Over the last 20 years, the collective has distributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to its members, Jay said.\nThat may translate to just a few hundred dollars for an individual publisher, but the money has been enough to allow small operations to buy their first computers or increase staff.\nBgoya said the remittances were particularly important in the early days, when hard currency was hard to come by in some African countries. Currency regulations have eased, he said, but earnings from the collective are still important when paying royalties to foreign-based writers.
\nExpectations that entree into Western markets would mean huge sales turned out to be unrealistic for publishers. Instead, they found a core of Westerners, many at universities, interested in African politics, social issues or literature who closely follow the collective's growing list some 150 new titles are added every year. Sales of 200 copies are considered strong.\nThe list offers a vibrant portrait of Africa children's books, scholarly works, whodunits, poetry collections, bilingual dictionaries, literary novels.\nJay said Western readers are most interested in books on African art, linguistics and gender studies. Publishers have to balance their desire to reach that audience with what they see as their responsibility to African readers, who have wider interests.\nOne publisher, she said, started a gender series just to meet Western demand.\n"His view is, he makes money selling those gender books in the North, but he uses it to invest in books he wants to publish at home," Jay said.\nThe collective keeps about half the net sales, but that's not enough to run the Oxford office and pay for author tours and publishers workshops. Norwegian, Swedish and Dutch foundations make up the difference.\nThe collective produced its first print-on-demand book in 1998. Now, all its members have access to that technology. Bgoya and Jay said transferring such technology to Africa and improving the production quality of African books was a goal the collective was meeting.\nOther goals, though, have been more elusive. The collective had hoped to strengthen African publishers to the point where they could compete with Western multinationals in Africa. However, most African schools still turn to the Western giants for textbooks. While sales to the West have increased, Africans still sell few books to each other, in part because of trade barriers and infrastructure problems on the continent.\n"It still is easier to get books from Kenya to Nigeria via the U.K. than (directly) from Kenya to Nigeria," Bgoya said. He said the collective would looks for new ways to address such problems.\n"We exchange ideas, we exchange experiences."\nJay said the collective is contributing to an important dialogue between the rich countries of the North and the poor countries of the South.\nReading is a way of "enriching one's understanding of the human condition," Jay said. "It's to be a better human being"
