unimpressive. But it's less than 1% of the global book market, despite Africa having 17% of the world's population. The good news is, both the global book market and the Africa book market are growing fast. Let's take a closer look.
while we cannot take these predictions as gospel, we can take them as indicative. Most of the growth will be happening outside the USA. China and India will account for much of it, as will the rest of the world. Including Africa.
need first to understand why the Africa book market is so under-developed today. For brevity, and to distinguish it from the digital opportunity, I'll refer to the current model as the analogue model. It's not strictly scientific but will help keep the two models clear in our mind.
partly to blame. Colonialism and the post-colonial legacy, of course. And many missed opportunities since. But we can't rewrite history, so let's move on.
not been possible to develop a pan-African publishing industry. The cold reality is that it's easier for a publisher in Kenya or Benin to sell a book in the USA or France than it is to sell the same book in neighbouring Tanzania or Togo. Or even to different parts of the same country. But we can't change the size of Africa, so let's move on.
the publishing industry, of course. Low literacy equals low book sales. More books in schools will encourage children to read. But many schools only have text books.
books to get them started and hook them on reading they were offered a better choice of books they were offered affordable books they were offered books in the language they speak at home they were offered comics and graphic novels they were offered books they could listen to Under the analogue publishing model none of those are viable options at scale across Africa.
African publishers have (mostly) been looking the other way, publishers in the rest of the world have been enjoying the benefits of digital books for over a decade.
ebook market alone saw 266 million sales and was worth $1.02 billion equivalent to the entire African book market. Statista's 2019 forecast for the entire US ebook market is a valuation of $5.487 billion. (7) (6)
to consumers in the US and globally. In 2018 OverDrive handled 277 million digital book downloads. That's 750,000 every day. 185 million ebooks and 88 million audiobooks were borrowed from OverDrive libraries in 2018. (8)
libraries worldwide that saw over 1 million digital book downloads. In Canada - population 33 million - over 5.6 million digital books were borrowed from the Toronto library in 2018.
Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Spain, India, United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Italy, Mexico and Bulgaria. It will launch in Brazil, Singapore and Germany shortly. Storytel expects to have over 1 million subscribers by end 2019. (9) Storytel is a digital audiobook and ebook subscription service based in Sweden.
2017 the Chinese media giant Tencent spun off its ebook arm China Literature in an IPO worth $1 billion - equivalent to the entire African book market. (10)
Zealand. (14) Angola 7 million Cameroon 6.1 million Côte d’Ivoire 6.3 million D.R. Congo 5 million Mozambique 5.3 million Tunisia 7.9 million Zambia 7.2 million Zimbabwe 6.8 million
million in 2019. (16) The Netherlands has 16.3 million people online. (15) Algeria and Ethiopia both have more. (14) Algeria 21 million Ethiopia 16.4 million
million in 2019. (17) Australia has 21.7 million people online. (13) Here's how Morocco, Tanzania and Uganda compare. (14) Morocco 22.5 million Uganda 19 million Tanzania 23 million
million in 2019. (18) Canada has 33.2 million people online. (19) South Africa will soon have more people online than Canada. South Africa 31.1 million and only at 34% internet penetration. (14)
and even Russia! Nigeria has 111.6 million people online. Nigeria is the 7th largest country by internet users and will pass Japan to take 6th place by 2020. And it's still only at 55% internet penetration. (25)
together it's reasonable to predict the 10,000% growth we've seen between the year 2000-2018 will slow any time soo. Given the close correlation of smartphone growth to date it's reasonable to assume that by 2025 we could be looking at 800 million Africans online. (28)
more than I've been able to include. No mention here of Amazon's ebook subscription service Kindle Unlimited, or Scribd (which earlier this year topped 1 million subscribers) or 24Symbols or Legimi or.... I touched on Storytel but didn't mention other audiobook services like Audible, Ubook, Booklava, Kitab Sawti, and Africa's very own AkooBooks. There are countless more.
are big business around the world. Then there's cookery books, photography... And there are countless new digital variants emerging that give publishers more reach, more revenue and more possibilities.
said last year, "Of course, we would all claim that we are reading on our phones but that is largely untrue…unless reading WhatsApp messages can be described as reading." Yet in the rest of the world readers are lapping up digital books alongside WhatsApp messages and, yes, alongside print books.
comics and their digital counterparts can comfortably co-exist. And best of all, digital is language agnostic. Digital books, comics and audio can be created in all Africa's myriad and beautiful languages, and distributed to eager readers in huge cities, suburban townships and, just as easily, in the remotest villages. No minimum print runs. No expensive printing. No costly distribution to a handful of bookstores. No remainders.
million Africans online today (800 million by 2025). And globally to more than 4 billion potential customers (over 5 billion by 2025) who are going online daily around the world.
a raft of industries that revolve around publishing. From content creators to librarians to educationalists to the creative industries like film and television. Just look at the way books are driving TV and film production globally. Digital publishing will not just benefit publishers, but will power the African economy,
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