The words local and location share the same Latin root — locus, meaning “place” — without the hierarchy the term later acquired. In the African context, centuries of empire and trade have turned local into shorthand for “periphery,” “developing,” or “not yet global.” It’s a distortion worth interrogating. Language carries power and often reproduces the hierarchies it claims to dismantle.
In publishing, this shift is far from harmless. A novelist from Kigali, Kingston, or Kabul may be central to their country’s literary life, yet in London, New York, or Paris, they’re reframed as “emerging.” This isn’t about talent — it’s about the machinery of discovery and extraction: translation, distribution, editorial attention, and institutional power that some geographies take for granted.
Terms like local, emerging, or underrepresented aren’t neutral. They carry the weight of history, geography, power, and capital. Settings such as Zadie Smith’s Kilburn, Sally Rooney’s Castlebar in County Mayo, or Gabriel García Márquez’ Macondo are not called “local fiction”, yet they are no more or less “local” than a Fatima Bala whose stories are rooted in Kaduna, Ayi Kwei Armah’s Accra, Niq Mhlongo’s Soweto, and Leila Aboulela’s Khartoum. A novelist from Kaduna, Kigali, Kingston, or Kabul may be central to their country’s literary ecosystem, yet in London or New York or Paris, they’re reframed as “emerging.” This is not about talent. This is about the Western logic of “the first” and its imperative for “discovery”. It is about the infrastructure of circulation and extraction — translation, distribution, editorial care and institutional power — that have long taken for granted.
Every global begins with a local. Everyone exports their “local” — and the world decides whether to follow. The question is who has the infrastructure and influence to make that leap possible.
For African publishers, “connecting local writers to global audiences” shouldn’t mean reinforcing a one-way flow of value, where legitimacy is bestowed elsewhere. That is not equity, but soft coloniality. Amplifying voices across geographies must preserve context, nuance, and political complexity. We are all rooted in a place before our ideas travel. The global is not neutral; it is the accumulation of many locals.
If we are to reimagine the literary world beyond treating otherness as trend, beyond commodifying Black pain and trauma, we must refuse to mistake representation and visibility for liberation and power. We need encounters that move in multiple directions, where power circulates rather than accumulates. That requires multilingual infrastructure, platforms for authors to speak on their own terms, and a decolonization of the frameworks used to measure excellence, success, and worth.
As a publisher working between Abuja and London, committed to African and Afro-diasporic books, I see three imperatives. First, invest in ecosystems, not just talent pipelines. Publishing may not deliver Silicon Valley-style returns, but it offers something else: social investment and soft power. A thriving African publishing ecosystem shapes narratives, strengthens cultural influence, and builds intellectual, political, and economic capital.
Second, create partnerships that acknowledge the complexity and power imbalances between publishers, editors, translators, and writers inside and outside Africa. That means co-publishing models, joint acquisitions, and risk-sharing arrangements that do not always place London or New York as the final stage.
Third, unsettle the colonial grammar of center and periphery, local and global. These terms are shaped by power relations. Writers and publishers are not passive recipients of global opportunities — they are architects of their own literary futures, grounded in their own locus.
Africa needs capital and networks. But above all, it needs to decolonize its imagination and the language used to describe its work. We must choose words rooted in critical tenderness, understanding, and mutual respect. Only then can we build the literary world we claim to want — one where no writer or publisher’s value depends on proximity to whiteness, the global minority, or the empire of Englishes.
And perhaps then local can return to its original meaning: simply, proudly, of a place — rooted, not reduced or reconstituted in the language of empire.
Bibi Bakare-Yusuf is the co-founder and publishing director of Cassava Republic Press, an Abuja-based publishing house.