BACKGROUND
Mkuki na Nyota Publishers is an indigenous Book Publishing Company established in 1991,
in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. With a background of 18 years as the General Manager of the Tanzania Publishing House, Walter Bgoya established Mkuki na Nyota Publishers in response to the general absence of independent scholarly publishing in Tanzania. Concentrating initially on scholarly books and general titles, MnNP have since then developed a diverse list of scholarly titles in the Social Sciences, fiction, children’s books and have recently branched out to publish high quality Art books.

Our Aim
Mkuki na Nyota aims to publish relevant, beautiful and affordable books for the local and regional markets and quality competitive books for the overseas market. As well as being marketed and sold locally and regionally through bookshops and other outlets, internationally MnNP’s titles are marketed and distributed by the African Books Collective – a marketing and distribution organisation based in Oxford, UK which was established by African publishers in 1989 in order to promote sales of their books in overseas markets. Through an agreement with ABC, Michigan State University Press represents ABC publishers in the United States. Walter Bgoya, Managing Director of MnNP, is Chairman of ABC.

Although it is mostly books for the academic community which have the greatest export potential, also performing well on the international market are more general titles, including dictionaries in Swahili and English for overseas universities with African Studies programmes. Children’s titles do equally well in the libraries market.

PROJECTS
Art
MnNP is currently developing an East African Art books line with the first two titles in the series, "From Ritual to Modern Art: Tradition and Modernity in Tanzania Sculpture" and “Malangatana” (works of the renowned Mozambican painter), already out. Both of these are high quality coffee table books. The third and fourth books in a series uniquely covering the whole of East Africa are now being written by the best scholars and art historians in the region.

Textbooks
From inception, a number of books which MnNP developed as general readers for young people in and out of school have been approved for use in schools as set texts and supplementary readers.
Several of these have sold in tens of thousands over the years and have been found invaluable by teachers and students alike. It is with the experience in this line of publishing that MnNP has begun to develop text books,
a number of which have already received the approval
of the Educational Materials Approval Committee (EMAC)
and are already on the market. The plan is to continue
to develop series of high quality textbooks and several are in progress.

Social Sciences
As well as providing scholarly books in the Social Science that are used at the university in various courses, MnNP have published books for and in conjunction with the Economic and Social Research Foundation (ESRF), Research on Poverty Alleviation (REPOA), Research on Democracy in Tanzania (REDET), The Mwalimu Nyerere Foundation, the Civil Service Department and UNICEF. Cooperation with Research on Poverty Alleviation (REPOA) and the Civil Service Department has proved particularly successful.


The Team at Mkuki na Nyota
In addition to the invaluable 32 years experience by the publisher, Walter Bgoya, a competent staff in editorial, production, marketing, sales, and distribution make up the team at Mkuki na Nyota. In addition to extensive in-house training, opportunities for further training are constantly sought. Opportunities for training have been sought and obtained with an attachment of staff to the Publishing House of the American University in Cairo, as well as attending a training course in Print On Demand organised by the African Books Collective in Oxford, UK. These permanent staff, combined with a number of free lance editors, designers and illustrators, managed to publish a record 45 children’s books and 15 other more substantive books in 2004, whilst all the time retaining the high quality and imaginative design for which Mkuki na Nyota is so easily recognised.