It is not correct that young Africans do not read much. They actually tend to be very voracious readers, reading the equivalent of several chapters daily on social media and on the Internet. They don’t read books as much but there is a reason for that. Actually, several reasons.

New technology offers young Africans free or affordable reading. They are constantly reading content on their phones. Asking young Africans to go back to expensive books when there is the Internet is like asking them to buy cassettes or DVDs when there’s YouTube, it won’t happen.

3. Yes, young Africans may be reading the wrong things on the Internet. It’s a failure of leadership. Our scholars are locked up behind expensive paywalls where they wrote unreadable journal pieces and impossibly expensive academic books that only people read in the West.

African scholars should begin to port engaging high quality content online. They should study the marketing techniques of the Linda Ikejis of the world - encourage deep high quality content that would engage the millions of inquisitive Nigerian youths on Nairaland and LIB.

Even though we have some good writers, African literature is pretty much stale and tired because it relies on 20th century paradigms and tropes - most Africans don’t read them - the market is in the West, but even there interest is waning. We must rethink our marketing strategy.

I can’t repeat myself enough, these books and journals are too expensive for young Africans at home. Even me, I can’t afford them. The other day there was an academic paper on my work in African literature.

I was asked to pay $45 for ONE download, that is like 30,000 Naira per download. Madness. I balked and made a lot of noise on social media and the publishers relented and for one month only they are allowing free downloads. That model is not going to help young Africans.

Again, many thanks @tandfonline journal for generously enabling one month free access to “Reading and writing… loudly”: Ikhide R. Ikheloa, online criticism, and African literary studies” by Alexander Fyfe who interrogates my work in the literary space. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02533952.2021.1906143

I am not saying we should study Linda Ikeji uncritically. What makes youths spend their waking hours on her blog? Same as Nairaland. My kids would never have been caught dead there, they had privilege, I could afford to immerse them in the world of books and reading from cradle.

My kid’s counterparts in Nigeria, many of them much smarter, do not have that privilege. We have a shared interest in engaging our young readers in the right content. Right now they are reading the wrong content because someone was visionary enough to engage them.