Through my visits to Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, for the Booksellers and Publishers conferences, I have witnessed something remarkable: a deliberate effort to promote culture through books.
Culture is not forced upon anyone. Instead, people are drawn in through the natural connection between books, culture and communities.
I attend these events as a publisher and bookseller, but each time, I return home thinking about something bigger than the book trade.
I keep asking myself: What would happen if African countries treated books and culture as seriously as the UAE does?
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The fifth Sharjah Booksellers Conference brought together 912 booksellers, publishers, distributors and online bookselling representatives from 99 countries, with more than 300 professional meetings dedicated to the business of books.
What struck me, once again, was not the numbers but the seriousness with which books were treated. They were discussed not merely as cultural products but as an industry, with markets, rights, distribution, technology and investment.
Sharjah has built an entire ecosystem around reading, including a book fair, children’s reading programmes, libraries and Sharjah Publishing City, which provides dedicated infrastructure for publishing businesses.
Its 2025 International Book Fair attracted more than 1.4 million visitors from 206 nationalities, alongside over 2,350 publishers and exhibitors from 118 countries.
The lesson for Africa is not that we must replicate the scale of these events. Rather, it is that we must recognise the value of a thriving book industry and what can be achieved when governments deliberately invest in building one.
A 2025 UNESCO report mapping the book industry across all 54 African countries puts this opportunity into perspective.
Africa’s book industry generates approximately $7 billion annually, accounting for about 5.4 per cent of the global publishing market. With the right investment and policies, UNESCO estimates that this figure could rise to $18.5 billion, with educational publishing alone potentially worth $13 billion, driven by the continent’s 329 million students.
Yet Africa produced only about 86,000 titles in 2023, from approximately 6,400 publishers, compared with India’s 281,000 titles. The continent also imports significantly more books than it exports, with a trade imbalance of nearly 76 per cent, largely involving Europe.
That is the real gap: not a shortage of stories, but an economy that has yet to develop the capacity to carry them.
Our challenge has always been the ecosystem. Who finances a book? Who prints, distributes and translates it? How does it reach a classroom or cross a border?
Intra-African trade accounts for approximately 15 per cent of the continent’s total trade, compared with 67 per cent among European countries.
For books, the challenge is even greater, as relatively few African publishers have the capacity to license or distribute their titles across borders.
However, encouraging developments are emerging.
Afreximbank’s CANEX Prize for Publishing now recognises African trade books across the continent, while UNESCO’s report calls for greater cross-border collaboration among African publishers.
The African Continental Free Trade Area also presents an opportunity to address barriers that have historically prevented a Rwandan children’s book from reaching a reader in Accra or a Kinyarwanda title from being licensed in Lagos.
These efforts are still evolving, but they point towards what African publishing needs next: shared markets, stronger translation and distribution networks, and libraries that function as knowledge centres rather than mere storage rooms.
Rwanda has an opportunity to contribute to this transformation. As the country positions itself as a knowledge- and innovation-driven economy, publishing, reading and cultural production deserve a clear place in that ambition.
They should not be treated merely as extensions of education policy but as part of an industry with economic, cultural and export potential.
I witnessed a small example of this shift closer to home last year, when a festival in Kigali brought publishers, authors, illustrators and policymakers together to discuss publishing rights, distribution and the future of African storytelling.
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It was nowhere near Sharjah in scale, but it reflected the same understanding: books must be discussed as an industry, bringing together everyone involved in their creation, production and distribution.
That understanding, more than any single event, is what needs to spread across Africa.
My experience in Sharjah did not simply convince me that Africans need to read more. It reminded me that we have yet to fully recognise books as cultural and economic assets worthy of deliberate investment.
The connection between people, culture and books that I witnessed there was not accidental. It was the result of an ecosystem built to nurture all three.
Africa has the stories, the talent and the readers. What remains is the collective commitment to build an industry that connects them.
The potential $18.5 billion market is not a guaranteed outcome. It is an opportunity we have yet to fully pursue.
The writer is an author, publisher and market systems facilitator.