Page 37 - University of Pretoria Research Review 2017

Foreword
Introductory Messages
DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE
PEOPLE AND CONTEXTS
Context
HEALTH AND WELL-BEING
PLANET AND SUSTAINABILITY
Awards
Lead Researchers
35
Africa is not ‘bookless’
Reading and writing are such fundamentally important skills that we don’t always think about the broader social role of books and print. We also tend to make assumptions about these skills because they are common. Sometimes, the role of book history research is to challenge these assumptions – and one of the more prevalent and damaging ones is the perception that Africa is a ‘bookless’ continent without a reading culture.
In fact, there has been printing and publishing in African countries since the invention of print in the 15th century, not to mention a much
older textual history of manuscripts circulated across the Sahara desert. Research on Ajami texts – manuscripts written in African languages using Arabic script – shows that these were produced as early as the 11th century, which challenges the standard assumption that society progresses from orality to literacy and then to print.
Africa’s written heritage is thus much older than previously believed, and predates colonisation in various areas. Can we really see print as a foreign import, when people in Africa have been adapting it to their own ends for several hundred years?
Lucinda du Toit