Prof. Dr. Shola Adenekan

I am a recipient of a Starting Grant from the European Research Council, in which I am leading a team of researchers – as a Principal Investigator – to study the networks of Yoruba Print Culture. My latest book, “African Literature in the Digital Age”, was published by James Currey, an imprint of Boydell & Brewer. You can purchase your copy via Amazon UK – https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=shola+adenekan&ref=nb_sb_noss

In the introduction to his dictionary, A Grammar and Vocabulary of the Yoruba Language (1852), Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther, makes an important statement about Yoruba people, of which he was one:

As the Natives have much to do with reckoning they very early begin to teach their children to count. This is effected simply by frequent exercise in counting cowries or stones: and it is astonishing how very soon little boys and girls can reckon a large number of cowries. They first begin by counting one by one: when they can do that with readiness, they begin by twos, and then by fives. A person cannot be more insulted for his stupidity in arithmetic, than by telling him, “O daju danu, o o mo essan messan,” “With all your cleverness and sagacity, you do not know nine times nine” (39).

Crowther’s statement shows the many contradictions of print culture in many African societies; the development of Yoruba orthography was mainly aimed at fostering Europe’s colonial agenda, of which Christianity was an essential part. Crowther as a formerly enslaved African who later became the first African bishop of the Church of England was therefore the ultimate insider-outsider used as a champion of Europe’s civilising mission.

On the other hand, however, Crowther’s statement can be read as a subversive attempt at asserting African humanity. Crowther’s dictionary embodies the way in which print publications simultaneously perform many functions; they are factual, fictional, a tool of marginalisation and at the same time a tool of self-determination. Crowther’s book, which was financed by the Church Missionary Society of England, marked a significant turning point in Yoruba history because it became a catalyst for a vibrant print culture, in which thoughts, ideas and the worldview of Yoruba people moved from solely being orally-based to one that combines the oral tradition with the print tradition. By using Crowther’s dictionary as the foundation for this research, I want to show how such patronage of African publishing networks signifies the dynamic of global power that still exists today with regard to African literature.