Joseph Conrad had “racist ideas” and National Geographic magazine is guilty of “generalisations” about Africa, said the United Arab Emirates’ Sheikha Bodour al Qasimi, vice-president of the International Publishers Association (IPA), at the IPA’s second conference on African publishing in Nairobi on Saturday (15th June). 

She told delegates that while a new surge of African writers was “taking the world by storm”, they were fighting an unfair battle “against established notions of cultural superiority and universal status quo.  They are doing a great job of sharing Africa’s stories, but th...