The Swahili coastal city of Dar es Salaam has long inspired imaginations and literary passions. From sacred religious texts to contemporary fictions, books and reading have been an integral part of the city's history.
However, Tanzania's book industry has been severely affected by fluctuating government policy which has shifted the contours of the textbook market away from privately-owned publishers to state-owned educational publishers. This has led to a reduction in both book income and book sales.
1. Mkuki na Nyota Publishers Ltd.
Founded in 1991, Mkuki na Nyota Publishers Ltd'researches, creates, publishes, markets and sells trade books, children’s and scholarly titles'. Their diverse list includes a number of titles in both English and Swahili, ranging from fiction to social sciences, children’s books and high quality art works.
The company is headquartered in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania and has a good reputation for publishing the best books on Africa in both Kiswahili and English. They also have a wide range of online services including their website, which offers free shipping on most books.
One of the top book publishers in Dar Es Salaam, Mkuki na Nyota is a leading name in Tanzanian publishing and has a large selection of titles to choose from. Their most popular title is Tales of Abunuwas and Other Stories, a collection of translations from an early Swahili edition that have been retold by John Lewis-Barned and his daughter Suzi Lewis-Barned.
The company is headed by Walter Bgoya, a creative director and the founder of Spearhead, a strategic branding firm that supports businesses in using design to communicate more effectively. They also hold the accolade of being the first to publish a book in Tanzania’s national language, Swahili. To celebrate 40 years of the mighty Mkuki na Nyota, they are hosting an event with a distinguished panel to highlight their achievements and address a few key questions about the role of the book in modern Tanzania.
2. Book Mart
Book Mart is an online book store that opened its first branch in Dar es Salaam in September 2018. It offers a large range of books, ranging from a selection of fiction and non-fiction titles to children's books, comics, magazines, management and self-help books.
Their focus is on Tanzanian authors, and their website features a selection of Tanzanian bestsellers (and some international titles) to read. Their social media feeds also feature book reviews, recommendations and news of upcoming events from their community.
They share their most popular books on Twitter and Instagram, and have a strong presence on Facebook and YouTube. Using these digital platforms to promote their activities and draw readers into their physical stores, they are a vital part of the local book culture in Dar es Salaam.
While structurally the book club operates around a monthly meeting in Dar es Salaam, it is clear that digital technology enables them to encourage and sustain 'communal participation' (Bakare-Yusuf 2011) through a series of inward-facing and outward-facing mechanisms. For example, the group uses a WhatsApp group to discuss their chosen books. Moreover, the group has expanded beyond their Dar es Salaam location and now extends across Kenya, Uganda and Malawi (Bashir 2020).
The book club itself is not structured around an organised reading list; rather it is built on a loosely defined set of themes focusing on family, parenting, entrepreneurship, motivation and personal development. Members can choose to buy their book from any of the four Book Mart branches or pick it up at a bookshop near them.
While it is a small book club by comparison to the other two, Leaders Read have been active since they launched in September 2018. Their WhatsApp group has nearly two hundred members from across gender lines and their monthly meeting involves a wide range of topics. They are a vibrant community of book-buyers who not only support Book Mart, but also actively build relationships with other Dar es Salaam bookshops.
3. Taswira Book Club
Taswira was established in January 2016 by a group of women with a shared interest in books, and subsequently partnered with Soma Book Cafe. The book club is primarily focused on African fiction and meets for two to three hours every last Thursday evening of the month (except in December). They have not yet curated their own dedicated social media account, but Soma Book Cafe regularly posts about their meetings across their social media platforms.
These book clubs constitute an important new space for 'communal participation' (Bakare-Yusuf 2011) as a means of encouraging and sustaining reading groups in Tanzania that are not only based around physical meeting spaces, but also extend through digital technology. In this way, they resonate with Bakare-Yusuf’s idea of ‘paravirtual networks’ in terms of constructing a new form of'social space' that is both inward-facing and outward-facing (Bakare-Yusuf 2011, 15).
One of the striking aspects of these reading communities is that their membership can be fairly dispersed within Tanzania: the members are generally well-educated and have access to digital devices; they often read English or Swahili language titles, which enables them to access PDF copies of books for free through pirated online download services and low-cost e-book editions that can be obtained for free from Africa-based publishers. Despite the fact that they are not able to access all of the titles they read through Tanzania-based publishers, these reading communities represent a valuable source of books for the Tanzanian publishing industry, particularly for small and mid-sized independent publishers.
As a result, we argue that these Dar es Salaam-based book clubs offer a unique opportunity for the Tanzanian book industry to invest in genres that have traditionally been underserved. In particular, we suggest that they offer a generative model for exploring new publishing genres and formats that could have far-reaching implications for the ways in which Tanzanians access books and engage with them as tools for self-development and for social change.
4. Umoja Book Club
Umoja Book Club is a network of like-minded Tanzanian women who read books to support their professional and intellectual development outside of their family lives (Umoja 2019). They aim to create a space for members to discuss books with each other, as well as with other professionals including Tanzanian politicians and entrepreneurs. They also host a guest speaker each month at their monthly meeting to reflect on and respond to the book that has been chosen (Rugaiganisa 2020).
As well as their physical meetings, Umoja have an ongoing'member feature', where they share profiles of their members with photos and reading recommendations. They largely focus on self-improvement titles written in English from authors such as Paul Coehlo and Todd Henry and also business motivational titles from Dale Carnegie and Ritha Tarimo. The book club also aims to promote Tanzanian-authored books through their monthly newsletter.
While the'social space' that these book clubs construct through their digital platforms may seem to be a less visible part of their relationships with Tanzanian booksellers, it is nonetheless important for their ability to sustain growing communities of readers and to position them as valued agents within the book industry in Tanzania. Through this they enable female-curated conversations that are generative and challenging of constructions of gender, power and patriarchal structures across sites as diverse as education, fashion, career choices and family life.
Despite the importance of these'social spaces' for their ability to reinforce the value of the printed book and the value of Dar es Salaam-based bookshops, it is important to note that these networks of reading communities are not necessarily a reliable or sustainable market for bookshops in Dar Es Salaam. Rather, they constitute a small and fluctuating group of readers who can be relied upon to buy books in large numbers each month but who can be relatively expensive for the booksellers.
5. Leaders Read Book Club
Dar es Salaam is Tanzania's largest city and is home to several top book publishers. It is also home to many small businesses and has a vibrant cultural scene. The music scene is primarily characterized by live dance music and "Bongo Flava," a form of rap music that has been popularized throughout the country.
Leaders Read is a Dar es Salaam-based reading group that was founded in September 2018 by creative entrepreneur Rehema Bashir. This club has grown from a WhatsApp group of around twenty female friends to a community of readers spanning across gender lines and beyond Dar es Salaam to Kenya, Uganda and Malawi (Bashir 2020).
The club's ethos is founded on empowering women and building a stronger reading culture in Tanzania. The club promotes its activities through a variety of platforms, including social media and regular online meetings with members in different parts of the country. It has an active Facebook page, Twitter account and Instagram presence, as well as a growing followership.
One of the book clubs' most striking features is its close relationship with Book Mart, an online bookstore started by Bashir and her business partner Demere Kitunga. The bookstore draws attention to its stock through social media and accepts orders on WhatsApp.
This is an important aspect of the club's position as a book club as it provides an easy and convenient means to source books in the shortest possible time. It also offers a direct link between book-buyers and authors, an aspect that is often absent from the work of other Tanzanian literary initiatives.
The research in this article has positioned these book clubs as paravirtual networks through which vibrant reading communities are being constructed in Tanzania. Drawing on and expanding the work of Stephanie Bosch-Santana, we explore how these book clubs interact with digital technology and each other, as well as with their relationships with booksellers.
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