Walter Bgoya Publisher, Writer

Walter Bgoya

In 1961, at the age of 19 Bgoya travelled to the United States on a student visa, and became a student at the University of Kansas thanks to a scholarship from the African American institute. For a little over a month he was hosted by a kind and generous white family in El Dorado, Kansas, before proceeding to the University. Experiences of racial discrimination on and off campus inspired him to participate actively in the civil rights movement and becoming a leader, despite threats by right-wing groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the John Birch Society. The Ku Klux Klan placed and burned a cross at his apartment, a practice used to threaten and intimidate black people who dared to stand up against racial segregation and oppression. The movement on campus has been documented in the documentary, ‘This is America?’ by Rusty Monhollon (2002).

In 1965, he returned to Tanzania, where he continued to champion progressive causes within the ruling party of the time, the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU). Having graduated in Political Science and International Relations he was employed in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  His work there was primarily liaison between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Organisation of African Unity and African national liberation movements based in Dar es salaam: FRELIMO from Mozambique, MPLA from Angola, ANC, PAC from South Africa, SWAPO from Namibia, ZANU, ZAPU from Zimbabwe, MOLINACO from the Comoros – and POLISARIO in Western Sahara. Tanzania supported liberation struggles in other countries such as FRETTING in East Timor. In 1972, he left the Foreign Ministry to become General Manager of the Tanzanian Publishing House (TPH), where he continued to pursue the same objectives albeit in less direct ways. TPH played a significant role in making Dar es Salaam a centre for progressive intellectuals from around the world. Its publications included Walter Rodney’s ‘How Europe Underdeveloped Africa’, Agostinho Neto’s ‘Sacred Hope’, Samora Machel’s ‘Establishing People’s Power to Serve the Masses’, and Issa Shivji’s ‘Class Struggle in Tanzania’ among other titles on local, regional and Third World political and economic issues. He has recently published the most comprehensive documentation of the National Liberation Struggles in Southern Africa in a 9 volume, hard cover boxed edition (Southern African Liberation Struggles: Contemporaneous Documents 1960 – 1994)

In 1990 Bgoya left TPH to found Mkuki na Nyota, an independent scholarly publishing company in Dar es Salaam. He is one of the founding members of African Publishers Network and African Books Collective of which he has been Chairman since inception. For 15 years (1994-2009 he was Chairman of the prestigious NOMA Award for Publishing in Africa. For more information on NOMA Award visit (http://www.nomaaward.org/).

Bgoya continues to publish diverse books including lately, art books once the exclusive reserve of international publishers. He has also written 5 children’s books and writes and lectures on African publishing and other issues of general public interest.