Elieshi Lema is an accomplished writer and publisher who started her professional career as a librarian before going into writing and publishing. She has served on the board of CODE and later worked as CODE Regional Director for East Africa. Together with CODE and four other individuals, she initiated the startup of the CODE-funded Children’s Book Project for Tanzania. Additionally, with the co-owner of E & D Vision Publishing, she researched, established, and became the Technical Adviser for Tusome Vitabu Project, which was funded by Royal Netherlands Embassy and managed by Plan International Tanzania. She has served as a board member of the African Publishers Network (APNET) and Executive Committee of the Publishers Association of Tanzania (PATA) and is currently on the board of Children’s Book Organization. Ms. Lema’s dedication to her work stems from a commitment to promoting knowledge.
Ms. Lema spoke with the GBA to discuss her views on private sector book publishing in Africa. This interview has been edited for length. You can watch the unedited interview below.
On the state of private-sector publishing:
“The state of private-sector publishing in Africa has never been steady historically. Shifts have happened between governments between taking center stage in publishing and distributing textbooks. And in other cases, there's been private-sector publishing, and government buying through tenders. And these two positions have shifted in most of the African countries in East Africa, where about 45 publishers are publishing — they fall within the three groups. Group one can be exemplified by Kenya, and to some extent Rwanda, where the private sector is publishing all materials for schools and also for the open markets. In Tanzania, we have government which is producing textbooks and distributing them, while private publishers produce supplementary materials - with a difference - because the supplementary materials that are being produced with government approval, have no markets because funds are still concentrated in the hands of the government. In other states like South Sudan, they do not have indigenous publishers who are publishing. They have foreign publishers from the region who are publishing. So those are the three groups that are operating in the East African region.”
On the challenges in publishing:
“Each group has a different challenge. With group one, for example, the challenge is ensuring that all people in the country are getting access to books, in which case they have to form alliances with a public library system that can run outreach programs because the more people have access to books, the greater the market. The challenge for the publishers where the government is participating in textbook publishing is actually convincing the government that private-sector publishing is central to creating an informed society, then, therefore, finding ways of supporting private publishers to produce books for schools and for the open market. The challenge for the other group where either indigenous publishers are few, or very weak is, of course, they cannot compete with foreign publishers, but they have an opportunity of seeking out co-publishing arrangements with stronger publishers in the region.”
On getting books to rural areas:
“Book distribution to rural areas has been difficult for a very long time. And this is because publishers and all the other actors in the blockchain are involved are working in towns and cities. They are not found in rural areas.”
“All actors in the blockchain need to find out, why do products like sugar, salt, [and] matchboxes, for example, reach the remotest villages, when books cannot? There must be a reason. We need to get books to the people needing them. So we need to explore what channels other private sector [actors] use to get those products into the remote areas.”
On sustainable book distribution:
“A sustainable distribution model will come out of our own exploration and efforts to see how we can use existing structures. It is difficult to establish new structures that will only deal with books. It's much better to integrate links within structures that already exist and that are selling other products. I think the private sector should take up the challenge.”
On sustaining a reading culture:
“One of the most important things is the political will for governments to invest in sustaining a reading culture - it's not something that is easy and can be done within three years of promotion. It has to be constantly addressed. It is getting worse because facilities like rural libraries, and community libraries do not exist, so people have no access to books. Access is only found in schools. And then the moment children graduate from primary schools, they get into communities where there's nothing to read. And within two to three years, they've fallen back into illiteracy or semi-literacy. Every year pupils are leaving school into communities where there are no reading materials. This situation has to be [resolved] by a common interest, between the private sector and the government, to find out the most cost-effective ways of stocking community libraries, and school libraries.”
Watch the full interview: