Everyman’s library

Lying on the bed he shares with another student in a tiny room on the campus of Dakar’s main university, first-year literature student Tamimou Li is reading an old dog-eared copy of Ferdinand Oyono’s “The Old Man and the Medal”. On the floor in front of him lies a pile of books accumulated over the course of many visits to the Senegalese capital’s roadside booksellers. “Access to books is difficult for us students. The university bookstore isn’t well-stocked and it can be hard to find what we’re looking for,” said Li, adding that some of his friends had to give up their studies because they could not afford the required texts. Most of the books in his collection come from the informal booksellers hawking their goods along a wall at Sandaga, the city’s main central market. These and similar set-ups around the country offer people new and used novels and textbooks at cut-rate prices. Cheikh Sene, a 65-year old bookseller, reigns supreme among the Sandaga crowd. At first blush, he may not stand out. Like most of his colleagues, he cannot read or write. But after 40 years of dealing in used books, he is a peerless salesman who can provide his customer with the book requested or a similar one within minutes. “I didn’t go to school but I can direct customers thanks to my experience,” he said. “I’ve never read a book but I know what’s in each one that I sell.” Having started out selling his wares on the pavement, he upgraded in the 1980s to a table. Today, he has documents certifying that he is a legitimate businessman renting a space legally. An important social function Abdourahmane Mbengue, for his part, became a bookseller in his final year of highschool. Having quickly grasped the potential of a system that would allow Senegalese people to buy books at low prices in the familiar context of a street market, he decided to quit school and devote himself to his new calling. In 1996, he founded the Association of Senegalese Booksellers (ABS) - which has a membership of over 500 today - to organise informal book traders, obtain legal status, and allow them to tap into the huge potential of the market. “People always want to ape western models but here, the socio-economic context is key,” said Mbengue. “People are more used to going to markets than bookstores, they have limited financial resources and they’re used to bargaining.” These roadside ‘bookshops’ play a particularly important role at back-to-school time when affordable textbooks become essential in a country where the average monthly salary is 45,000 CFA francs (about US $80) and, according to the latest ministry of education numbers, over 80 percent of children go to school. “Textbooks are expensive. In traditional bookstores, parents pay between 45,000 and 60,000 CFA francs (US $80-110) for each child,” said Demba Diang, another bookseller who has been at his post in Sandaga for nearly 10 years. “But we sell used books and we also trade. So a student can get this year’s texts by trading the ones from last year, plus a little something extra. So if he needs seven books, he can have it for 7 000 CFA francs (about US $13).” Strength in numbers ABS’s Mbengue estimates that these informal businesses account for 70 percent of Senegal’s book market and a number of experts now consider them key players in the distribution process nationwide. Without these entrepreneurs, “the reading revolution won’t happen”, said publisher Lamine Diack at an ABS conference. “We can’t really consider them illegal. Rather, they are a necessary evil,” said the Ministry of Culture’s Diel Keffely Wele. Despite the fact that less than half of its adult population is literate, there is a big appetite for books in Senegal. But publishers are unable to sell all their products through conventional channels because bookstores are absent from much of the country and they tend to have prices that are well out of the reach of the average person. "There aren’t a lot of bookstores here. On the other hand, there are informal sellers in even the remotest areas. Even I often buy books from them," Wele said. Such an admission from a government official would have been unlikely 30 years ago when sidewalk bookshops first appeared and were frequently the targets of police crackdowns. Even today, however, booksellers who encumber roadsides with their wares risk a run-in with the law. But the ABS ‘union’ is recognised by the government and works with city officials in Dakar and the suburbs to obtain legal spots for booksellers, a strategy that not only reduces police raids but also gives the entrepreneurs added legitimacy in the eyes of the public. “Before, the booksellers were marginalised, considered failures,” said ABS head Mbengue. “But now, things are changing and we’re a real part of the book industry in Senegal.” Thinking big With an extensive presence in the capital and its suburbs, the ABS wants to do more than simply organise the business of bookselling. It wants to bring in improvements, through marketing and service seminars for example, so that it can serve the population better. And beyond that, the ambitious Mbengue would like to get all the sellers set up in one place, a measure he believes would give his colleagues more security and allow them, by pooling their resources, to keep prices down even during peak periods like the start of the school year. He even hopes one day to start up a library that would provide a good study environment for young people and access to books for those who could never afford to buy them. “Like a mosque or a church, it would be maintained on the basis of people’s contributions,” Mbengue said. “It could also offer literacy courses for parents to help them be more involved with their children.” Mbengue’s ideas have informal booksellers from around the country asking to join his organisation. But caution is the order of the day. “As much as I’d like to be involved all over Senegal, we’re taking our time,” he said. “Being a member is a responsibility.”