Paper short abstract:

Focusing on governmental & philanthropic involvements from the 1950s to the 1980s, this presentation has the purpose of highlighting how Francophone African countries encountered the challenge of an autonomous book sector, while African books remain invisible in contemporary research.

Paper long abstract:

The African-book industry was always an economic stake for the Western world, raising many questions on structural autonomy, soft power survival and the postcolonial transition. These issues are particularly sensitive in Francophone Africa. Indeed, it is surprising to observe that France set up cultural cooperation with its "almost" former African colonies starting in the late 1950s. By creating a cultural network in Africa, France rather negotiated a transition towards independence, setting a strategical role for French publishers in African educational programs and establishing Paris as a centre for the outreach of African literature. Actually, the independence of the African-book industry remains problematic because it became the arena for growing bilateral and multilateral Western involvement, from the early 1960s. This external influence has never ceased. Furthermore, in the late 1970s, it was strengthened by the pressure of the Bretton-Woods economic institutions that counteracted Unesco's initial will to support autonomous African book development. When the economic crisis appeared in Africa in the 1980s, all those foreign presences met a philanthropic involvement. This charity movement - with Scandinavian, Francophone and US governments and NGOs in the first place - broadcast at that time the false picture of a "book famine" in Africa. Subsequently, it is interesting to observe the 'presence' - i.e. the invisibility - of the African book in the ascending francophone and postcolonial studies from the 1980s to nowadays.