Paris hosted the 4th edition of the African Book Fair from Friday, March 14 to Sunday, March 16, 2025, with Cameroon as the guest of honor and Brazil as the special guest country. This edition was centered around the themes of “diaspora journeys,” offering a wide range of conferences, meetings, roundtable discussions, and workshops featuring authors and publishers from all corners of the continent.

As is customary, CAFRAD closely engaged with this event and celebration that honors African culture, offering literature enthusiasts from Africa, the diaspora, and the Francophonie a chance to discover new authors and immerse themselves in the wealth of African cultural production, including novels, theater, poetry, essays, and memoirs.

Indeed, the program of this edition featured a series of insightful conferences and meetings addressing literary, cultural, and social themes at the heart of contemporary challenges in Africa and its diaspora. The days were animated by professional meetings between African and European publishers, with a special focus on sessions, acquisitions, and co-editions in the field of children’s literature.

Additionally, a training session on book metadata, led by You Scribe, highlighted the importance of digital visibility for publishers. Several roundtable discussions explored experiences and collaborations between children’s book publishers in Africa and the diaspora, while also shedding light on the actions of the International Organization of La Francophonie to support the discoverability of Francophone books. The topic of digital book distribution was also discussed, particularly through conversations on audiobooks and the dynamics of book fairs in Africa.

Political and social debates also animated the tables at this fair, addressing hot topics such as violence against women in times of war, Françafrique, as well as the issues surrounding Pan-Africanism and artistic resistance through literature. Tributes were paid to major literary figures such as Eugène Njo Léa, with presentations of his works, as well as to writers like Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo and Frantz Fanon, whose intellectual legacies continue to inform contemporary reflections on freedom, identity, and postcolonial struggles.

Throughout the centuries, African writers have used their pens as weapons to denounce injustice, repression, and inequality while asserting the identity, dignity, and freedom of their people. Indeed, the question of artistic resistance through literature in Africa is complex and deeply rooted in the historical and contemporary struggles of our continent. Art, and particularly literature, has always been a powerful vehicle of resistance against various forms of domination, whether colonial, political, social, or economic.

During colonization, African literature played an important role in the fight against the oppression of the European man, highlighting the suffering inflicted by him and the deep scars left by racial discrimination. Through ink and pen, the enlightened African writer, empathetic, humanist, and patriotic, calls his brothers and sisters to collective awareness, urging resistance by denouncing injustices, but also reminding, through words, of the African identity eroded by colonialism.

In today’s post-colonial world, literature becomes a defense weapon against new contemporary challenges, such as neocolonialism, new authoritarian political regimes, internal conflicts, socio-economic inequalities, and violence against women. Writing is a form of resistance to oppression, allowing individuals to question, criticize, denounce, and claim the rights of others, especially minorities, women, and youth.

The fair also explored more specific themes such as African comics, the impact of literature on historical memory, and the role of African youth in the diaspora in building collective imaginations. Cross-literary meetings, discussions on relations between Africa and Brazil, and reflections on the place of Cameroonian authors in the new African literature further enriched the event. In sum, this gathering serves as a place for reflection, professional encounters, knowledge sharing, and celebration of African and diasporic literary creations.

Two prizes were awarded during the fair.

CFARAD invites African leaders and the public to support authors through reading their works to bring about transformative change on the continent. Books are centers of training and development of actionable knowledge, provided they are read intelligently.