Co-publishings and translations

After the Africans’ first heated and indignant reactions to Nicolas Sarkozy’s speech in Dakar on July 26, 2007, his declarations on the African continent’s inaction or the absence of French responsibility in its current problems deserved a well-argued response, uncluttered with any emotional diversion. In the aim of enlightening President Sarkozy, yet also his entourage and, broadly speaking, the general public, about the reality of African history, Adame Ba Konaré launched in September 2007 a noticed call to the historians’ community. This book is the product of this mobilization: 25 contributions by world-famous experts or younger researchers, both African and European, who each tackle with rigor and precision one aspect of the continent’s rich, complex and little-known history.

Year of publication of the pan-African version: 2009, 350 pages, 15,5 X 24 cm

The result of a remarkable three-year-long investigation that took award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker Marie-Monique Robin across four continents (North and South America, Europe, and Asia), The World According to Monsanto tells the little-known yet shocking story of this agribusiness giant—the world’s leading producer of GMOs (genetically modified organisms)—and how its new “green” face is no less malign than its PCB- and Agent Orange–soaked past.

Robin reports that, following its long history of manufacturing hazardous chemicals and lethal herbicides, Monsanto is now marketing itself as a “life sciences” company, seemingly convinced about the virtues of sustainable development. However, Monsanto now controls the majority of the yield of the world’s genetically modified corn and soy—ingredients found in more than 95 percent of American households—and its alarming legal and political tactics to maintain this monopoly are the subject of worldwide concern.

Released to great acclaim and controversy in France, throughout Europe, and in Latin America alongside the documentary film of the same name, The World According to Monsanto is sure to change the way we think about food safety and the corporate control of our food supply.

Marie-Monique Robin is an award-winning French journalist and filmmaker. She received the 1995 Albert-Londres Prize, awarded to investigative journalists in France. She is the director and producer of over thirty documentaries and investigative reports filmed in Latin America, Africa, Europe, and Asia. She lives outside of Paris. George Holoch has translated more than twenty books, including Notes on the Occupation (The New Press). He lives in Hinesburg, Vermont.

Year of publication: 2010 ; 384 pages

Ousmane Sy describes his journey, that of a negotiator extraordinaire, moving between action and reflection, between Africa and the world, between the past and the future. In this work from his lively and unapologetic pen dipped in personal experience, Ousmane Sy sets out real alternatives: an authentic decentralisation, a radical reform of the state, regional integration achieved by the people, the rethinking of international aid. What he offers us is a real project for Mali and Africa.

Ousmane SY is a doctor of economic and social development. He was a researcher at the Rural Economic Institute and headed up the UNDP programme in Mail, then piloted the Mission for Centralisation and Institutional Reform in Mali, before joining the governement as Minister of Territorial Adminstration and Local Communities, which gives him the opportunity to put his theoretical work into political practice. He has also created his own centre of expertise and advice, the Centre of Political and Institutional Expertise in Africa (CPIEA). Since 2002 he has been a coordinator for the Alliance for the Rethinking of Governance in Africa.

Preface: Pierre CALAME

Year of publication: 2009, 224 pages, 14 X 21,5 cm, ISBN: 978-2-84377-149-1

What does fair trade mean today? Who are the main stakeholders? What is its future? So many questions which this book sets out to answer by way of seven experiments on site in various regions of the worls. In the course of this journey, the reader will visit a small organisation of coffee producers in Chiapas, a quinoa farm in Bolivia, and India to explore less traditional forms of fair trade.
This book reveals the many facets of an ever-growing movement, seeking the human face behind the consumer, the community behind the producer and to redefine the social and political links among those long reduced to disembodied economic players. Beyond the sterile criticism levelled against it in recent years, but without lapsing into an idealised discourse, the authors provide food for thought on the issues raised by fair trade compared with appeals for fairer international trade and the possibilities of an alternative market based on other values.

Corinne GENDRON is a tenured professor in the Department of Strategy, Social and Environmental Responsibility at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM) and holds the Chair of Social Responsibility and Sustainable Development. She has written many books and articles on fair trade as well as sustainable development and social responsibility. She is regularly called on as an expert by private and public organisations in Quebec and internationally.

Socio-economist specialising in economic solidarity and fair trade, Arturo PALMA TORRES is currently an expert associate at CRIDA (France) and consultant at the Brazilian Ministry of Agrarian Development. He is a member of the movement for economic solidarity in France and the international network ALOE (Alliance for a Plural, Responsible and Supportive Economy).

Holder of a Masters Degree in Environmental Science, Véronique BISAILLPON is the coordinator of the Chair of Social Responsibility and Sustainable Development of the School of Management Sciences at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM).

Year of publication: 2009, 274 pages, 14 X 21,5 cm, ISBN: 978-2-84377-148-4

Ousmane Sy describes his journey, that of a negotiator extraordinaire, moving between action and reflection, between Africa and the world, between the past and the future. In this work from his lively and unapologetic pen dipped in personal experience, Ousmane Sy sets out real alternatives: an authentic decentralisation, a radical reform of the state, regional integration achieved by the people, the relaunch of international aid. What he offers us is a real project for Mali and Africa.

Preface: Pierre CALAME

Year of publication: 2009, 224 pages, 14 X 21,5 cm

In the context of globalization, how is it possible for humanity to reconcile its economic needs with the inescapable fact the natural resources are limited ? That is the question asked by Pierre Calame in this book.

This book bears the “Le Livre équitable” (Fair Book) label, which symbolizes this solidarity between publishers – solidarity also indirectly mobilizing readers: because this book is sold for 25 € in France, it can be bought half this price in Republic of Guinea.

Year of publication : 2009,
608 pages,
14 X 21,6 cm

The spread and consolidation of the women‘s movement in North and South over the past 30 years looks set to shape the course of social progress over the next generation. Peggy Antrobus asks

• Where are women now in the struggle against gender inequality ?
• What are the common issues that they face around the world ?
• What challenges confront the women‘s movements ?
• And what strategies are needed to meet them ?
  

The author draws on her long experience of feminist activism to set women‘s movements in their changing national and global context. Her analysis will be an invaluable aid to reflection and action for the next generation of women as they carry through the unfinished business of women‘s emancipation.
"Today the global women’s movement stands at the crossroads
between protecting hard-won gains and being swept away by the
tidal wave of globalization. It is my belief that feminist politics and praxis hold the key to addressing the threat this terrifying conjuncture poses for human security everywhere".

Peggy Antrobus was born in Jamaica. Her studies in Economics led her to a gradual commitment in the field of socioeconomic development. Working with NGOs and discovering feminism have transformed her understanding of economy and politics forever. She has worked for the UN, the Women and Development Unit (WAND) and the Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) network.

See English version at www.zedbooks.co.uk

Set up in Porto Alegre in 2001 in response to the Davos World Economic Forum, the World Social Forum has, with each publication, continued to flesh out, internationalize and build up its organization.
However, due to lack of information on the content of the debates, it has never succeeded in convincing the media, public opinion and politicians of its ability to put forward constructive ideas. A great many proposals have nevertheless emerged. Drawing on their memory of the previous forums, eleven editors, women and men from different regions of the world, covered the debates at Porto Alegre, for the 2005 WSF event, and collected the proposals that emerged from the eleven themes addressed. Their work demonstrates that the World Social Forum is a genuine vehicle for helping build a world community that is able to produce a significant amount of intellectual advances and put forward specific proposals based on its conviction that “another world is possible”.

Year of publication: 2006

Translated into portuguese by Giselle UNTI.

This book was co-published by the Brazilian publisher
Vozes, the Angolan publisher Chá de Caxinde and the Portuguese publisher Campo das Letras and received support from the Prince Claus Foundation for culture and development.
Following Les batailles de l’eau by Mohammed Larbi Bougerra, this is the second French-language title of the “Enjeux Planète” series, translated and published in the Portuguese series named “Questões Mundiais”.

In the North as in the South, we like big cities, but we don’t like their violence. A common tendency is to blame the poorest inhabitants for this violence, and then, in order to fight against its spread, to adopt strategies based on strong security measures: our societies are quickly becoming societies of fear. Town planning, already, divides space into fortresses and ghettos. One cannot continue to conceptualize urbanization in police stations: an alternative analysis of the phenomena of urban violence and insecurity is necessary. This can only be done by putting this question in perspective, in the context of the violence of urbanization and globalisation, while also taking into account, the point of view of the poor and particularly among these poor, the “malicious ones”, outsiders, illegal immigrants, criminals, members of gangs.
When everything seems blocked, the “vision of the poor” opens the way to a pacification of urban territories. Against the current obsession with security, a creative dialogue is essential with those that the ruling power blames or distrusts. This book is addressed to all those who seek to understand the logic of the city, those for whom the city inspires fear and love, who don’t want to give up it, but also to the inhabitants of the extreme districts, even if they are poor and “malicious”, even if the city destroys them more than it protects them. To rebuild cities we can live in, we must disobey the models.

Year of publication: 2006,
188 pages

Translated by Patrick CAMILLER

Also available in Arabic, Portuguese, Spanish and French.

This English co-publication now accompanies the French-language (12 publishers), Portuguese-language (5
publishers), Arabic-language (5 publishers)and Spanish-language (1 publisher) versions.

Rapid population growth, climate change and pollution have combined to make it the resource over which wars may be fought in years to come. But does water have a price? Is it a right or a need?
Increasingly, water is viewed as a commodity whose function is to generate profits. In this book, Larbi Bouguerra argues that instead we should view it as a common good of humanity. Water has an exceptional cross-cultural symbolic value and its use raises enormous questions about our lifestyle, our ethics and our relationship with nature. Bouguerra makes a powerful case for a society that is more economical with water and manages it openly and democratically, as a global resource.

Year of publication: 2006,
208 pages

Invited in 1998 to a writers’ residence in Rwanda, Véronique Tadjo, from the Ivory Coast, discovered the remnants left by genocide. For collective memory’s sake, she decided to write in order to give faces, names, and lives to those that she met, whether victims or torturers. At times reporting, at times fiction, this novel gives a human perspective on one of the greatest dramas experienced by contemporary Africa. This work is a proof of literature’s ability to give a new look on the past and to help people relearn how to live together. In order that such barbarity doesn’t happen again.

From the Ivory Coast, Véronique Tadjo currently lives in South Africa. She writes books, collections of poetry, and children’s books. The “Grand Prix Littéraire d’Afrique Noire 2005” (Literary Grand Prize for sub-Saharan Africa) was awarded to her for the whole of her works.

Year of publication: 2006,
144 pages,
12 X 19 cm

Chronicles of a family and a court, Festins de la détresse, plunges us into a portrait of lives that fall victim to changes in economic and social conditions, often too rapid for one human life to adapt to. Drawing from the complex tradition of African song, Aminata Sow Fall wants “to change the belief according to which food and material goods are the only things necessary to survival, and to highlight the importance of creativity and spiritual needs. These needs are even more important than material goods, which are not a sufficient basis for the dignity of a human being”.

Year of publication: 2005,
160 pages,
14,5 X 22 cm

What image does Europe project to the outside world, this Europe who is used to gazing at herself, preoccupied with her minor or major internal quarrels? We asked this question to ten African writers. Coming from the Maghreb or sub-Saharan Africa, each of them chose one particular aspect of European culture: the question of time, femininity, technology, hospitality, the cult of the dead... From Carnac, Geneva, Germany and Senegal, Africa looks at Europe.

Year of publication: 2004

Africa.
A continent of vast riches buried under countless ills...
Words, deaths and blood...
Africa is doing badly. But who says so?
Its children. Its artists. And its writers.
Thanks to Raharimanana and Soeuf Elbadawi, African voices are unmasking the truth about French Africa through short stories. Chicanery, espionage, torture and other manipulations... Anything goes.
Thirteen writers remind us that Africa is neither deaf nor dumb. They give us the latest short stories from French Africa to show again and again the reality of what is at stake in the old French colonies, which are now considered independent.

Year of publication: 2003

“Fate would have it that from a certain moment of my life, I would become a bearer of two languages, Chinese and French. Was this solely due to fate? Or did a dose of deliberate will enter into it after all? Regardless, I took up the challenge by assuming, in my own manner, both languages, all the way to the extreme consequences. Two complex languages, commonly considered ‘major’, so rich in history and culture. And above all, two such fundamentally different languages separated by the largest chasm imaginable.
Nothing surprising in what since then, at the heart of my linguistic adventure oriented toward love for an adopted language, has become a major theme: dialogue...”
F.C.

Year of publication: 2002

If we are to believe the major myths and tales, travel is part of the human adventure. Whether man embarks for good or toward a promised land (Abraham or Moses), experiences numerous tribulations before returning to his point of origin (Ulysses), takes to the road to seek wisdom through multiple encounters (Buddha) or goes off to discover terra incognita (Christopher Columbus or Marco Polo), he enriches his perception of the world.
In an era when travel is part of our daily life, Wang Yipei, writer and specialist in Western literature, very sensibly evokes the Chinese approach in which the themes of internal exile and migrations are omnipresent. Olivier Bleys, a young novelist and traveler, offers his Western perspective on the theme of travel through literature and the history of civilizations.

Year of publication: 2002

Is the theme of passion the core locus of cultural difference between East and West? Western civilization sees in passion a founding experience, emotionally, aesthetically and spiritually fundamental. Yet the East is more skeptical, reflecting Buddhist wisdom, which invites people to free themselves from passion to achieve awakening.
In a chronicle embodied in contemporary China, Ye Shuxian chooses to talk about loving passion. Codified in traditional China and repressed under the Cultural Revolution, the feeling of love is expressed more strongly today.
Michel Sauquet shows all the richness and ambiguity of the word passion in European culture: it sustains life and suffering; it absorbs, builds and destroys. Loving passion, passion of the artist as best exemplified by the character of Rimbaud; mystical passion exalted by the music of Bach.

Year of publication: 1999

For centuries, human cultures have rooted themselves in stone and monuments for utilitarian or artistic purposes, reflecting the power of kings or the greatness of gods. When first learning about Chinese architecture, what could be better than a guided visit to several emblematic monuments, such as the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven and the Summer Palace? This is what Yang Xin provides, in a text full of detailed description. We are taught how Chinese architecture is a total art, rooted in the axes of thought: relationship with nature, permanent negotiation between the yin and yang, the empty and full, the sky and the earth. On the other side, Dom Angelico Surchamp, eminent specialist in Roman art, sets forth a panorama of the history of Western architecture, showing the gradual evolution of the temple, church and dwelling house. Little by little, space becomes organized around key values. More than the simple struggle between man and the elements or between man and material, the art of building translates a vision of the world.

Year of publication: 1999

So few people know Chinese culture, yet many are familiar with Peking duck and fried rice. Gong Gang happily explains how much, in China, the idea of beauty melds inseparably with the idea of goodness, in an association that may appear strange to a Westerner. Drinking tea, for example, invokes particular values, of clarity and limpidity, according to a broader definition of the five senses. For Paul Ariès, the issue is more controversial. Recalling the origin of good taste in the West, expressed particularly in culinary art and in restaurants, which arose in the early 19^th century with characters such as Brillat-Savarin, Mr. Ariès is alarmed by globalization and its threat to this table culture. “Can good taste coexist with modernity?” An exchange of views that will delight culinary enthusiasts.

Year of publication: 1999

There is a close relationship between the notion of beauty and that of culture, between aesthetic and humanity. “I am beautiful, o mortals, like a dream of stone” wrote Baudelaire, personifying the relationship. But is beauty truly accessible? How is beauty translated in the universe, whether Chinese or Western? From an original perspective, Zhu Cunming shows how the experience of beauty is universal but also profoundly tied to that of ugliness. Witness the temple bronzes and the dragon heads with enormous mouths, like so many hidden facets of the feeling of beauty. On the other side, Dominique Fernandez defines beauty as an experience of ambiguity. More than the cathedral, which speaks too directly of God, music in particular evokes this inaccessible intangible. Beginning with the myth of Orpheus, which runs through Western culture from Monteverdi to Jean Cocteau, Dominique Fernandez pursues the truth of beauty in an amazing meditation. A delightful, cultural read.

Year of publication: 1999

Translated from Portuguese (Brazil) into French by Flavio Corrêa de Mello

Ruisseaux d’Afrique (Benin), 2012; 37 pages
Original edition: Pallas Editora (Brazil)

Rooted in African daily life, in the streets of Bamako and Conakry, in the fishing port of Cotonou, on Tunisian soil, or redolent of Afro-Brazilian heritage, the 281 tales, documentaries, albums and novels that make up the catalogue are just waiting to be discovered. Books by nine independent publishing houses from Africa (South Africa, Benin, Madagascar, Mali, Morocco, the Republic of Guinea, Rwanda, Tunisia) and from Brazil are now available in France, Belgium and Switzerland!
If you would like to diversify your stock, read in Bambara, in Arabic, in English, in Portuguese, in Kinyarwanda, in Malagasy, in French, if you are simply looking for some escapism… the solution is here… just turn the pages !

The Alliance distributes all the books contained in the catalogue.

Download the catalogue here.

The “African readings” catalogue was created with the support of the Ile-de-France Region.

This collection, which takes its title from an iconic verse by Fernando Pessoa, is a veritable invitation to a journey through sixteen tales by
authors from Brazil, Guinea-Bissau and Angola.

Year of publication: 2010; 224 pages; 14 X 21 cm; ISBN: 978-85-347-0294-2

To access the youth catalogues, click here and here.

These catalogues are available from the Alliance. Contact us telephonically or by email for all enquiries and orders.

This poetical text, writing by Béatrice LALINON GBADO, is a real homage for Woman, a wonderfull poem illustrated by several senegalese artists working with the technic of “under-glass”.

Year of publication : 2006,
48 pages,
24 X 24 cm

1001 activités autour du livre is not about learning to read but about giving children from 2 to 11 years old and beyond a passion for books and reading. How can you achieve this? By playing, drawing, inventing, talking, miming... all thanks to books. This playful and original work of practice and experience makes you want to devour all the others! An authentic tool for child education professionals and attentive parents.

Initially published by Éditions Casterman in 2013.
Date of publication (Pan-African version): September 2020
A specific adaptation for this pan-African co-publishing has been made by Philippe Brasseur; the co-publishers have also updated and adapted to their contexts and environments some of the references of the book.

A book co-published by 11 publishing houses in sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian Ocean: AGO Média (Togo), Atelier des Nomades (Mauritius), Editions Bakame (Rwanda), Editions Elondja (DRC), Ganndal (Guinea), La Farandole des livres bookstore (Niger), Gashingo (Niger), Jeunes Malgaches (Madagascar), Editions Ntsamé (Gabon), Ruisseaux d’Afrique (Benin) and Vallesse (Ivory Coast).

This co-publishing bears the label “Fair Trade Book”.

This solidarity co-publishing is the result of a workshop on children’s literature organised by the Alliance in Abidjan in May 2019, as part of the International Conference of Independent Publishers 2019-2021. It received the support of the Centre national du livre.