Notes from African Studies Association of Africa (ASAA) conference at USIU (Day 2 Plenary)

October 25, 2019

African Studies Association of Africa (ASAA) conference at USIU

9:30 AM - 10:30 AM

Day 2 Opening Plenary

Walter Mboya (Mkuki na Nyota)

• What is the difference from American mining company, extracts and goes away and nothing returns except you are left with the moonscape where disaster is happening. What is the difference between European researchers who come to Africa, go to villages, get all the material, go write their PhDs, get promoted, become big time, and those people who did provide the raw material for which produced this book are left out. This touched a raw nerve. Has inspired Europeans to work on this.
• How to make academic publishers in the North to give gratis rights to African publishers so African publishers can produce them more cheaply to have it circulate. One thing publishers don’t want is to give up their publishing rights. Finally we did get an agreement which basically commits those who are prepared to participate to give African publishers PDFs of the work so they can print them out in their countries. There are all kinds of contradictions in this.
• Have published over 10 books via Univ. Of Birmingham, etc. Etc. African publishers. Negotiating with CODESRIA. We can do those books and bring them to Nairobi. Kenya has put on 16% VAT on books. How do you put VAT on books? 
• POD - printing on demand. Western publishers bringing so many books on the market. 305,000 titles (from US publishers). Where are the readers for the millions of titles every year? Productions are increasing but markets are contracting for general book. People want to do their own publishing, they come into intermediation where content you want to take directly to the consumer cutting out the agent (book seller). These folks were trying to solve the problem of production. This kind of specialization. You just print the 30 books that the people want. Sell and then produce the book. All of us can be publishers tomorrow if we wish. Think, write, put on PDF, put a book out there.
• Contradiction. We are using the same method to solve a different problem. We don’t have enough books. Universities don’t buy African books because they want to use the same books that their teachers used in Harvard, Cornell, etc. They don’t create their own books. What happens, African students believe knowledge is created in the North … for them. They don’t see Kikuyu names, Igbo, etc. German, etc. How do we create high level intellectual work for our universities? We started. I got a good professor, John Nkomo. Introduction to Optics. 
• USIU - Why don’t you publish them here?

Q: What is the reality on Open Access?

Q: How do you do co-publishing global North and South?

Q: What should the state do?

A:

• AAA: 
• co-publishing. When we cite the work, we put Univ. Of Wisconsin Press, although work is co-published. Can we put the African Publisher first?
• Contemporary Journal of African Studies. Going Open Access and free from next issue. Let people know about the journal, review for us.
• Wits Univ. Press: 
• Open Access is free to read but not free to publish. Early career academics that don’t have funding. It is great to have OA. Works well for journals. Sometimes we are expected in global South to make our content for free. It is a big business model for big companies. But where we function, we can’t charge those fees of those authors. ME: They seem like it is done and closed. Doesn’t make money sense so that is it… not something they are really working on changing…
• Network for University Presses would be great. Libraries are important stakeholders. Booksellers need to make money out of what they sell. So they don’t always support scholarly books. But networks of pressses, libraries, researchers would be very valuable.
• Twaweza:
• Matter of principle that there should be a co-publishing arrangement. Negotiation relates to rights. African Publisher can pay a nominal fee to access that. Minimium maybe 400 - 500 USD paid to global North publisher. Avail the PDF and then issues related to distribution. These are things that can be done at the contractual level. Issues related to the branding. How does the African publisher be branded in the publication. Multimedia platforms. For Africa, important not to only relay on print but also other forms of dissemination. Possible for some of these content to be available in audio and so on?
• State has huge responsibility to support removal of VAT, we need to do more advocacy work as scholars. Often we are left to struggle by ourselves. Certain politics to shift the state. That politics has been missing. Many of us feel that once you do the manuscript, it is done but so much that needs to be done to shift the infrastructure. In the interest of the state for citizens to become ignorant. 
• Walter:
• All the contradictions we are looking at is the absence of the state in support for creation of knowledge. Not properly funding universities, paying miserable for university lecturers, not paying for research. Professors were going around in 1970s driving matatus. We never recovered from that! We still haven’t gone to the state of the 1960s. World Bank came and said you don’t need universities. You just do the digging in the ground and eating. I shouldn’t be hustling around to find money to 
• WB destroyed the state run publishing in Tanzania. Devaluation of Tanzanian shilling. From having net balance of 70K in Jan, minus in Dec. Couldn’t run publishing house.  We did all of this and then the WB came and IMF. I don’t like those fellows. They have made my life miserable. You understand. The Wits lady is uncomfortable. She probably has worked with WB. 
• 20 years later they come and say, oh we were wrong. Don’t believe in them. I’m serious. So, can we bring the state into discussion. We must not depend on the state. Why not?? They take our money. I am supposed to teach people how to read? No.
• This citation to be fair, the originator of the work is cited first but politeness and correctness should show both.
• Most African publishers don’t pay attention to the politics of their work.