#Bookfairs: New ‘old’ media and the digital politics of Somali literary promotion

Abstract

Since 2008, Book Fairs held across the Somali Horn of Africa have been a remarkable feature of civil society activism in a region usually associated with conflict and crisis. At the forefront of these efforts to promote Somali-language print culture is a digitally connected and social media-savvy generation of young people. This article explores the work done by books (as symbolic objects) and Book Fairs (as multimedia cultural festivals) to provide spaces for debate about Somali identities. Attention to local histories of media development is necessary for understanding the relationships that exist between print and digital culture, and the destabilisation of clear temporal distinctions between ‘old’ and ‘new’ media technologies. This participant-observation based study shows how the contemporary social media environment affects the ways in which print culture is promoted – facilitating cross-border civil society networks, and intensifying the political salience of literary activism for actors articulating different visions of Somali statehood.

Self‐determination and a shattered star: Statehood and national identity in the Somali Horn of Africa

“…Since 2008, for instance, Hargeisa has been hosting increasingly widely renowned International Book Fairs. Elsewhere, one of the authors (Chonka, 2019a) has demonstrated how this annual civil society-led multimedia literary festival has showcased Hargeisa's stability and provides a platform for Somaliland nationalists (including the organizers themselves) to explicitly promote the breakaway state's independence cause. At the same time, the fairs point to Hargeisa's growing stature as a regional hub for Somali cultural production.…”

Book review: African language digital media and communication

“…In Ethiopia and Eritrea, the digitisation and popular media use of a (non-Latin) indigenous Ge’ez alphabet is distinctive on the continent, with Windows being available in this Ethiopic script since 2010. At the same time, across the politically fragmented Somali-speaking regions of the Horn of Africa, a common dialect is used within a dynamic and transnational digital public, the implications of which this reviewer has explored in this journal (Chonka, 2019).…”