Popular print and reading cultures in francophone Africa

By 2050, it is estimated that 85% of the world's French speakers will be based on the African continent (Observatoire de la langue française, 2014). There are expanding francophone African diasporic populations in North America, Europe, and China. With this future-oriented demographic context in mind, the proposed project will investigate popular writing and reading practices in post-independence Senegal, with a particular focus on magazines. The project addresses urgent issues concerning literacy and development, working with the National Women's Museum in Dakar and the Institut Fondamental d'Afrique Noire at the University Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar to develop professional capacity and promote engagement with historic print initiatives within Senegal through a pilot digitisation project and two related exhibitions (one in Dakar, the other in Bristol). Public engagement work and academic outputs (conferences/publications) will build connections to current creative and pedagogical work around reading. This work engages with research priorities in Modern Languages and the Arts and Humanities more broadly, namely the interpretation and preservation of cultural production in the Global South; changing ideas of the public sphere in an era of transnational mobility; and the materiality of post-independence local and national narratives.

From Onitsha market literature in Nigeria to recent online and print channels such as Chimurenga (South Africa) and Kwani? (Kenya), popular print cultures in Africa have to-date been studied in primarily anglophone regions of the continent. This research has highlighted the social worlds of everyday literacies, the emergence of new genres, and the kinds of textual and visual authority wielded by so-called 'popular' print. Recent research on print culture in francophone regions of the continent has focused on inequalities in the global literary marketplace and the production of a francophone literary canon. This project will advance those findings by turning to the broader post-independence print archive found in popular magazines and investigating its significance for current and future ideas about reading, writing, and the materiality of the word in the Global South. The core focus will be on three magazines distributed across francophone Africa and its diaspora: Bingo, La Vie Africaine, and Awa: la revue de la femme noire. These magazines have been overlooked due to difficulty of access, leading to potentially narrow understandings of reading cultures in twentieth and twenty-first-century francophone Africa. They acted as vehicles for cultural translation across regions, between urban and rural milieux, as well as transnationally. They evoked a sense of individual and collective identity, themes of work and leisure, ideas of literature (the founding editors were published poets), political solidarity (whether national, or transnational, especially in the Cold War context), and acted as tools for generating future aspirations. The emergence of female writers and readers through these magazines is particular significant, pointing to active networks of female cultural producers that pre-date the canonical 'first generation' of African women writers. A central research output of the current project will be a co-authored article analysing quantitatively and qualitatively over 2000 readers' letters that appear in these magazines, based on quantitative and qualitative analysis. This work seeks to identify and analyse instances of reading for pleasure, as well as more instrumental reading practices. In their digitised form, these magazines will provide a rich archive of material for historians, political scientists, and social anthropologists working on this region. Using innovative collaboration between the UK, France and Senegal, the project seeks to collate, curate, research, and promote the archive of popular print production in francophone Africa for academic and non-academic audiences.

The two planned exhibitions and pilot digisation project will have a number of non-academic impacts designed to encourage dialogue around popular writing and reading cultures in Senegal and francophone sub-Saharan Africa more broadly. The collaboration with Musée de la Femme-Henriette Bathily (MUFEM) in Dakar, Senegal will co-produce an exhibition that will encourage new audiences to engage with the past, present, and future of African women's magazines. The exhibition aims to highlight positively the innovation within these historic print publications and the ways in which they encouraged reading and literacy. The project will reach out to current producers of print and digital magazines in Senegal through the curation of the exhibition itself, and the launch event/round table. We are particularly keen to encourage young literary entrepreneurs to engage creatively with this heritage of independent print production on the African continent and reflect on its significance for their own practice.

This work has the potential to influence syllabi and educational policy, by shifting cultural and critical practices towards popular print production on the continent. This is significant given unevenness in the material means of knowledge production between Global North and Global South, and the dominance of literature (including by African authors) published in France. Publicity for the project will target teachers and students at the main university in Dakar, which is next door to the Musée de la Femme (MUFEM). Employees of relevant government bodies (the Direction du Livre et de la Lecture at the Ministère de la culture et du patrimoine) will be invited to attend the launch event of the exhibition and the PI/CI seminar at the Université Cheikh Anta Diop. International organisations and NGOs (especially those relating to women's literacy) will also be invited to attend the launch event of the exhibition. A questionnaire, guestbook and feedback 'message board' at the exhibition will be used to measure responses. We will also provide take-away postcards/posters featuring a cover of Awa magazine and with a link to the project website inviting people to provide further feedback.

The collaboration between academics cultural institutions in Senegal and the UK will also be developed through the translation and adaptation of this exhibition for a UK audience in Bristol. This exhibition and two related engagement activities (with local women's groups and with Senegambian Hidden Talent community group) will explore reading cultures generated and sustained by mobile popular print forms in the transnational public sphere. Senegambian Hidden Talent is a grassroots organisation that encourages aspirations among young Senegalese and Gambian people in the UK. Linking this project to their activities has the potential to expand the current scope Black History initiatives in Bristol and the UK in productive ways, while raising further awareness of the work of our partner organisations in Senegal.

The pilot digitisation project will contribute to the development of professional practice at our second partner organisation, the Institut Fondamental d'Afrique Noire in Senegal, with the potential for them to develop further digitisation initiatives after the life of the project. This project has clear heritage value for networks of people involved directly in the production of these magazines and popular print production in sub-Saharan Africa more broadly. Informing the general public will be part of the publicity work (social media; Senegalese press; posters) around the exhibition/web resource carried out with curators at the Musée de la Femme-Henriette Bathily. This collaboration, linking awareness-raising exhibitions to the creation of digital resources and more traditional academic outputs, could provide a model for future Arts and Humanities research in other ODA countries.