African literature is outward facing, relentlessly fixated on satisfying the demands of western readers. It has close to zero impact on the lives of those who live inside Africa. Her authors are mostly uninterested in the social, political and economic welfare of their subjects.
In the absence of a robust publishing industry, African writers have been forced to flood the West with their manuscripts. The West deserves credit for sustaining much of African literature with funding, and eager, paying readers. It has come at a cost.
jaladaafrica.org/2015/09/15/of-…
jaladaafrica.org/2015/09/15/of-…
African literature is a victim of perverse gentrification. Many writers tell tall tales for profit with “Africa” as a mere backdrop. Many are enablers of fascists, thieves and executioners of genocide. Today they pen #BlackLivesMatter dirges behind paywalled journals in America.
The Nigerian literary space is in bed with a corrupt government. Its purveyors lead the great life, they hold no one accountable, no one holds them accountable, they say all the right things and get paid by white folks in the West, and crooks and thugs at home. It’s a great life.
Perhaps the expectations are unrealistic. We look at African writers as beholden to spaces within physical boundaries. The world has surged beyond physical spaces; writers are busy engaged in issues that are alien to African communities with no infrastructures of accountability.
Most of what is hailed as African literature is written by African writers in the Diaspora. Thus African writing has an unintended identity.
For good reason, African star writers have had to face the West where the (paying) readers are. Man must not live by the idealism of bread alone. It does raise an unintended question: Is this African writing? I would argue that it is Diaspora African writing.
Diaspora African writing is important work, but this is definitely not African writing. What is African writing? I don't know anymore. At my age, I am beginning not to care, I simply read what I enjoy and bin the rest. Age has its perks. 🚶🏿
Africa’s writing industry is challenged in a space that lacks the infrastructure. Writers must eat. The paying audience is abroad although millions of Africans read (online) relentlessly. So, “African literature” writes to Babylon’s taste test. The narrative distorts our reality.
With respect to what the West calls “African writing”, with few exceptions, nothing innovative has come out of Africa in the past decade, just mimicry. Most of it is a hustle with a lack of range and depth. It’s a race for fame and gain. Many folks should be reading, not writing.
There is little range and depth to African writing. Much of African literature is about the single story of deprivation and oppression. To the extent that these writers are indifferent to social advocacy on these issues, they need to move on to other themes. This is a hustle. 
The hustle mania has moved from benign to toxic. Take Nigeria as a case study; her well known writers in the west are not the freedom fighters of feminism, patriarchy, oppression, sexuality, etc.
Many Nigerian writers are oppressors, enablers of the toxicity they rail against,that earn them Western grants. They write talking points for the corrupt and enablers of genocide. They look the other way when activists disappear, presumably victims of extrajudicial murder.
In return, Nigerian writers’ literary festivals, book launches and lush lifestyles are fully funded by thieves, the corrupt and executioners of genocide and state-sanctioned murders. Nigerian literature is becoming the face that shields rulers and intellectuals from scrutiny.
The world must know that under democracy Nigerians are in the worst hell they have ever been subjected to, and many writers are culpable in this. Abacha’s gulag was safer than today. This democracy is a farce; the world is quiet because the narrative comes from oppressor-writers.
The world must know that what is referred to as African literature is merely a middle class hustle that relies on the oppression of the poor and the vulnerable in order to flourish.
Many Nigerian writers are more likely to be outraged at the murder of a dog in Boston than the slaughter of hundreds of people on the streets of Nigeria. Stop funding fascist literature. Stop attending their literary festivals. Hold them accountable as you would your own writers.
It is rank hypocrisy for Nigerian writers to lecture the West about racism when in Nigeria they are witnesses to genocide. Nigeria is a huge crime scene and Nigerian writers have chosen to look away be cause it hurts their brand and is not as sexy as bending the knee in America!
For Africans, an unintended consequence of reading books is to make the book a lying mirror to our faces and see us as human caricatures. Much of what passes for “African literature” is guilty of this, more than any other. Oral folk narratives do see our humanity. #YouTube lives.
It is not all gloom and doom. The term “African writer” is a pejorative, a writer is a writer, it is time to eliminate prizes designed exclusively for African writing. It’s patronizing and reinforces stereotypes about African culture and aptitudes.
In particular, the @CainePrize for African writing should simply be called the Ako Caine Prize. The empire died a long time ago. Stop the condescension. It allows rich white men to indulge in racist fantasies about Africa through low-budget writers.
