But operating a business in Nigeria isn’t for the faint-hearted, a lesson the co-founders learned after 10,000 copies of their first title were ruined by a local printer. “It was heart-breaking
photocopied books, though illegal, are hawked with impunity. Despite this reality, Bakare-Yusuf and Weates devised a creative model to combat piracy. Upon signing a book deal with JAMB (Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board), the body responsible for administering university entry exams, Cassava Republic requested this heavily discounted title be included in the exam’s registration fee and that JAMB be responsible for its distribution. This meant that the approximately two million registered students had only one avenue to pay for and collect their book.
Having established a sustainable brand in Nigeria, Cassava Republic opened its second office in the UK in April 2016.
According to Ainehi Edoro, founder of the African literary website Brittle Paper and an assistant professor at Marquette University’s English faculty, Cassava’s expansion into international markets will help reverse the trend of African literature getting published first in the West and then slowly making its way back to the continent. “They are coming in with a fresh outlook
And yet, small presses like Cassava Republic, with their limited resources, have a hard time competing with major international publishing houses. “The fact is none of us can compete with six figure advances,” contended Nii Ayikwei Parkes, a British-Ghanaian writer and co-founder of Flipped Eye, an independent publishing house in London specializing in black literature. And even if small firms like Cassava Republic can attract new authors, Armitstead said they risk losing the successful ones to bigger houses offering a global reach, aggressive marketing budgets and foreign rights sales.
Unbowed by these obstacles, Bakare-Yusuf points out that if Cassava Republic’s presence in the West forces big publishers to “sit up” in terms of how they engage with African authors, “that’s a good thing.”
With dreams of opening offices in the U.S. and South Africa, the accidental entrepreneur turns to her immediate goal of boosting the number of literary fiction titles published annually from five to 12.
“We have to nurse a lot of writers,” she said, knowing Cassava Republic was built on the promise to nourish.