Now in its fifth edition, the Paris African Book Fair has become a fixture on the French cultural calendar, with previous editions since the Fair began in 2021 attracting some 10,000 visitors over its two-day duration as well as dozens of publishers and hundreds of writers from both France and Francophone and mostly Sub-Saharan Africa.
This year’s event, held over the weekend of 21-22 March, saw the Fair still in search of a permanent venue, with previous ones including the town hall of the French capital’s sixth district and the Halle des Blancs Manteaux, a refurbished 19th-century market building in a central conservation area, apparently proving either too small or unavailable.
Instead, this year’s Fair was held at the Refectoire des Cordeliers, a former dining hall now pressed into service as part of the campus of Sorbonne Université in the famous Latin Quarter of the French capital. This seems to have been a stop-gap choice, as early publicity had indicated that the event would once again be held in the Halle des Blancs Manteaux.
Whatever the reason for the change in venue, many visitors to the Fair, both in this and recent years, must have felt that it is a pity that this important event, attracting thousands of visitors from Sub-Saharan African and the wider Francophone African diaspora, apparently cannot find a venue better able to meet its ambitions. It constitutes one of the few major meeting points in Europe for the African publishing industry.
Picturesque though this year’s venue was, and easy to find for those unfamiliar with Paris, it was scarcely large enough to house the stands of the publishers that had gathered for the Fair, let alone the large and enthusiastic audiences. Visiting the Fair on the afternoon of its first day, Al-Ahram Weekly found lines of people seeking to enter and, inside, even more people looking through the books on offer such that it was difficult to exchange ideas with the representatives of the publishers or even in some cases to see their books.
The programme of panel discussions and meetings with authors, always an important feature of the African Book Fair and, for many, one that is eagerly awaited, had had to be moved some distance away to a separate building next to the Church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. While it is always a pleasure to walk along the famous Paris boulevard that leads in this direction, particularly in bright spring sunshine, this arrangement may well have put some people off from attending the discussions, diluting their enjoyment of the occasion.
Once the haunt of left-wing writers such as the French novelist and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and others in the decades following the Second World War, this part of Paris has long been taken over by high-end shopping outlets and restaurants that would probably be beyond the means of the struggling intellectuals that feature in Sartre’s novels.
It is difficult to imagine Sartre and his friends flourishing in Saint Germain today, and visitors to the African Book Fair may also have found themselves fighting through crowds of weekend shoppers as they made their way to the 19th-century Hotel de l’Industrie building on Place Saint-Germain-des-Prés for the Fair’s discussion programme.
This was a far from optimal solution to the problem of a suitable venue that the Fair has experienced since its beginning, and it is to be hoped that the Fair’s sponsors, or the public authorities, will now step up and provide it with an adequate and more permanent venue.
Discussions: It was difficult, given the time available, to attend more than a few of the talks that had been arranged as part of this year’s African Book Fair.
The theme of this year’s Fair was “African youth,” a departure from previous years when a particular Sub-Saharan African country was selected as guest of honour. Many of the discussions focused either on topics believed to be of interest to African youth today or on the contributions to African literature made by young African writers.
Needless to say, the overall focus of the discussions, like that of the Fair, was Francophone Africa, particularly Francophone Sub-Saharan Africa, though there were contributions made to the discussions by writers from the North African Arab countries that use French, along with Arabic and in some cases also varieties of Berber, as an important means of expression, such as Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria.
Well-known Francophone publishers from the North African Arab countries had stands at the Fair, among them Editions Frantz Fanon and Casbah Editions from Algeria and Editions du Sirocco and La Croisée des Chemins from Morocco. There was no representation as far as the Weekly could tell from Anglophone or Lusophone Africa.
Speakers on a panel called “what future for African youth” set out some of the challenges facing many African young people today. According to Kadia Moisson, co-founder of the Club des Diasporas Africaines, one of the major challenges facing young people across the African continent is employment, with quality jobs offering perspectives for training and promotion being hard to come by even for qualified young people. Far too many African young people are also in the NEET category of not in employment, education, or training, she commented.
Africa is a young continent, Moisson said, with up to 72 per cent of the population of some African countries being under 24 years old. The perceived absence of perspectives for the future was not only a waste of the enormous talent and creativity of African young people but also a source of preoccupation for the future of the societies from which they come.
Other members of the panel commented in similar vein, with Leonce Houngbadji, editor of the publication Notre Voix, emphasising the need to find ways to channel the creativity and energy of the continent’s young people towards quality jobs, and Marcellin Konan Kouakou, director of the Henri Poincaré schools in Bouaké, Cote d’Ivoire, pointing to practical ways in which more targeted training could reduce the sometimes glaring lack of fit between the qualifications offered by some of the continent’s education systems and the needs of the labour market.
Marie-Louise Outohouri, president of the Cote d’Ivoire youth associations, suggested that one practical way in which such problems could be reduced was by the provision of more appropriate employment advice. Too often, she said, African young people were left to face such problems alone, but a lot could be done by helping them to build on their talents and to develop entrepreneurial projects.
A second panel also attended by the Weekly, this time on “women, young people, and the environment,” brought together authors Touhfat Mouhtare, Veronique Tadjo, and Madeleine Zio Makato to discuss the important subject of climate change and how this is impacting communities at a grassroots level in parts of Africa.
While the speed of social change in many African societies over recent decades, particularly in the wake of industrialisation and globalisation, has changed attitudes towards the environment in not necessarily positive ways, they said, more and more young people today are rediscovering traditional ways of relating to nature that emphasise co-existence rather than exploitation.
While young African people in the diaspora are more likely to be aware of the challenges of climate change, the speakers said, possibly because of the emphasis placed on this topic in the societies of which they are a part, this is also changing in Africa itself, where more and more young people are becoming involved in protection and conservation efforts.
Women’s voices are still often inadequately heard, the speakers said, possibly because of special problems in some African societies regarding access to the public sphere. However, this too is changing as the scale of the challenges facing the African continent as a result of climate change becomes apparent.
Publications: Back at the Fair itself, the crowds had been building up since the early morning, eager to see the African and Africa-related publications produced by well-known French publishers like Gallimard as well as by French publishers specialising in Africa and the African diasporas like Karthala, L’Harmattan, and Présence Africaine.
All these had extensive stands displaying items from their back catalogues and their new publications and also serving as venues for authors to sign copies of their works. Gallimard, one of the only major French publishers not owned by a large conglomerate, was displaying African writers in its well-known Folio paperback series. Writers can progress from publication for niche markets to the mainstream Folio series depending on sales and positioning.
It was good to see classics by older West African Francophone writers such as Ahmadou Kourouma, Camara Laye, Amadou Hampâté Bâ, and Ousmane Sembène all available in Folio paperbacks on the Gallimard stand, along with works by contemporary figures. Gallimard has also long played an important role in introducing Francophone African writing to international audiences through its Continents Noirs series, which, created in 2000, now has a backlist of some 150 titles by dozens of authors, including many that have since made the cross-over to Folio format.
Continents Noirs, along with similar publications put out by other Paris publishers, serves as an important entry point for writers from Francophone Africa to the French literature market and, from there, to the market for African literature worldwide. Its list thus reveals much about how French publishers continue to play their traditional role as entry points to international publication for many African writers.
While it did not have a separate stand, Seuil, another major French publisher, though this time owned by a large corporation, was also present at the Fair, notably through its well-known Points series of paperbacks that includes works by many Francophone African writers. The Paris bookstore Le Tiers Mythe had a large stand at the Fair that included many Points authors, and the Weekly noticed works by Eugene Ebolé, Mahamat-Salah Haroun, the Nigerian-American writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Achille Mbembe.
Among other French publishers present at the Fair, Karthala, L’Harmattan, and Présence Africaine were particularly in evidence. Founded in the 1940s by the first generation of Sub-Saharan African writers to become well known in Europe, Présence Africaine is the legacy French publisher of works by Frantz Fanon, Kwame Nkrumah, and Cheikh Anta Diop, the latter known particularly for his writings on what he said were the Sub-Saharan African origins of ancient Egyptian civilisation.
Karthala is well known to Paris audiences owing to its large backlist and ongoing publication programme of books on the history, sociology, and politics of non-European societies, often by researchers from the regions concerned.
L’Harmattan, an equally venerable independent publisher, specialises in the human sciences, notably of non-European societies. Its famous bookstore in central Paris functions as a meeting point for African writers, and it has a network of subsidiaries across Francophone Africa.
Region: A keenly awaited feature of the Paris African Book Fair is the award each year of the
Grand Prix Afrique sponsored by the Association des Écrivains de Langue Française (ADELF), founded in 1926 to promote French literature worldwide.
Seven novels by writers across Francophone Africa are on the shortlist for this year’s Prize, with half of them represented by African publishers rather than publishers based in Paris. Among the finalists are novels by In Koli Jean Bofane (Nation cannibale), a major voice originating in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Bilguissa Diallo (Transhumances), originally from Guinea and published by Editions Elyzad in Tunis, and Amadou Barry (Journal d’un exilé), also from Guinea and published by Paris publisher Julliard.
While this year’s winning novel had not been announced at the time of writing, publishing insiders were betting on In Koli Jean Bofane, an established voice, or, should the jury wish to signal its openness to newer voices, Amadou Barry, whose novel recounts the experiences of an undocumented African worker in France.
But perhaps the real draw of the African Book Fair is not the presence of the major, or minor, French publishers having African lists, however distinguished, or even the award of the Africa Prize, but the promise the event holds out of more direct contact with the region.
Many African writers not resident in France come to the event to sign their work, and there are stands from many African publishers who may not be well-known among French and Europeans readers and whose books may not ordinarily be available in France.
The impression given at this year’s Fair was that more African publishers than ever had made the trip to Paris for the event, some of them probably working on an artisanal scale and needing only to put some books into a suitcase, while others serving as distributors of a French publisher’s lists and originating new books of their own.
Most Francophone African publishing is on a small-scale, and the book market, though large as befits the large population, is mostly confined to educational books, most of which, particularly at secondary and tertiary levels, are still imported from France. Add to that problems in local markets, such as of distribution within and between different countries, a still under-developed reading public, and the difficulty of reaching out to different audiences, and it will be easy to understand that most Sub-Saharan African Francophone publishers are artisanal in scale and produce only a limited number of books primarily for niche markets.
Books are also often considered to be luxury products in some African countries, with the prices particularly of imported books being often out of reach for many local readers and local production not in a position to take up the slack.
However, on the evidence of this year’s African Book Fair special efforts had been made to increase African representation, with some 18 publishers being listed from Cote d’Ivoire and a good half dozen each coming from Benin, Guinea, Cameroon, Mali, the DRC, the Republic of Congo, and Senegal.
More than 200 writers were signing their works at this year’s Fair, and visitors thus had the chance to meet some of those responsible for the continent’s rich literary production.
5ème Salon du Livre africain de Paris, Paris, 21-22 March
* A version of this article appears in print in the 23 April, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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