Copyright and piracy explored at IPA Nigeria seminar

The threat to copyright, and thereby to African publishers, posed by “big tech” was raised by International Publishers Association President Michiel Kolman at the IPA’s first seminar on African publishing held in Lagos, Nigeria yesterday (9th May).

“The current discussion around exceptions and limitations [in educational publishing for example] pits the global north against the global south in a proxy war for big tech to erode copyright,” he said.  “This development directly undermines your efforts in building a sustainable market for African publishers.”

Entitled ‘Publishing for Sustainable Development – the Role of Publishers in Africa’, the seminar saw delegates from more than 20 African countries and nearly 30 publishers, including the presidents of the publishers associations of Ghana, Mauritania and South Africa.

The president of the Nigerian Publishers Association, Gbadega Adedapo, spoke out against piracy, saying: “If we don’t tackle the scourge of piracy, then, to quote Chinua Achebe, ‘things fall apart’ – the centre of publishing cannot hold and anarchy is loosed upon our book world.”

Afam Ezekude, director general of the Nigeria Copyright Commission, said action was being taken and that it had a zero-tolerance approach to piracy.  “Since January we’ve carried out more than 340 raids and seized nine million items with a market value of 9bn Naira,” he said.  “We also work closely with the Nigerian Customs Service and in January intercepted 28 containers from China, 20 of which contained pirated books.”

John Asein, executive director of Nigeria’s Reproduction Rights Society, put forward the idea of "safe corridors" for books printed overseas, with reliable entry points that publishers trust, so that pirated books cannot come in.  “We did this successfully some years back with pharmaceuticals,” he observed.

There were numerous calls for governments to have “national book policies”, and Lily Nyariki, bookshop manager at Kenya’s Moi University, said there was a need for a pan-African booksellers association.  IPA Secretary General José Borghino urged publishers to provide data on their industry “because without data, all our stories to government are just anecdotes”.

There were calls to protect publishing in indigenous African languages, “otherwise you’re simply strengthening European languages”, noted Bibi Bakare-Yusuf of Cassava Republic, and the conference closed with Sheikha Bodour al Qasimi, founder of Sharjah’s Kalimat Group and a key figure in organising the event with Adedapo, announcing that Kenya is to host the next International Publishers Association Africa Seminar.  It will be held in Nairobi and organised by the Kenya Publishers Association.