Europeans introduced the print culture to other continents. However, the Yoruba people in Nigeria used specific terms to describe modernity before the arrival of the Europeans. There is no study yet examining how networks of people with shared and even diverged interests in journalism and literature changed Yoruba and Nigerian history through printing. The EU-funded YORUBAPRINT project investigates over 150 years of printing culture in the Yoruba-speaking area and its cross-cultural connections to reveal a solid history of West African engagements with modernity. The project works with local researchers and archivists, examining the richest collection of rare samples in Nigeria and produces data and literary theories disseminating them into platforms.
Yoruba print culture is important because of its articulation of the relationship between transcontinental print networks (between Lagos and London, for instance) and local contexts of production. The newspapers, small magazines and books of colonial and postcolonial Nigeria, especially those in Yoruba language, produced new cultural spaces and intellectual traditions that made new publics possible. Early signs of anti-colonial struggles in colonial West Africa can be found in the various networks of Yoruba print publications that existed during the colonial era. The subversive assertions and complications of postcolonial identities also make Yoruba print culture significant, especially through its foregrounding of the epistemic violence of colonialism and an emergent activist response to this. In postcolonial years, new networks helped to produce new genres of poetry such as Ewi, and also influenced the formations of new Christian denominations such as Redeemed Christian Church of God, which has several branches in Europe and the Americas. The world’s second biggest film industry Nollywood, thrives because of its link to Yoruba print culture. This project challenges the single story - of abject and poverty - about Africa, by showing that societies on the continent use print technology as an important tool that allows them to adapt and connect with an ever-changing world, as well as actively participate in the World Republic of Letters.
Nureni Aremu Bakenne's Ph.D. research (2022-2026) is a study of empirical literature and development of newspapers among the Yoruba people of West Africa, with the main focus being Nigeria. Among other things, the project will be analysing the symbiotic relationship between the first newspaper in Nigeria and Yoruba print culture. This will be achieved by anaylsying relevant literature, theoretical approaches and cultural influences that that form the basis for Yoruba print culture.