On 18th October 2024, Nigeria-based publishing house, Cassava Republic Press, won the CANEX Prize for Publishing for the non-fiction book Female Fear Factory: Unravelling Patriarchy’s Cultures of Violence by South African author Pumla Dineo Gqola. This win, though standalone, is interconnected with the direction the pioneering publishing house is moving.
Founded in 2006 in Abuja, Nigeria, by Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, Cassava Republic Press aims to “bring high-quality fiction and non-fiction for adults and children alike to a global audience” with a mission to “change the way we think about African writing”. I first came across Cassava Republic Press in 2023, when they announced the inaugural Global Black Women’s Non-Fiction Manuscript Prize. The award was then recognised as the biggest non-fiction prize for Black women writers, an initiative lauded both within and outside writing circles.