Travel tech: Finding Africa’s travel future on Spotify

Science fiction was my teacher long before I had any formal education in technology. It was my university of the future, with Isaac Asimov, Arthur C Clarke, Robert Heinlein and Ray Bradbury as the professors.

They taught me to imagine technologies that were beyond the reach of the world in which I grew up, and to understand their implications for humanity.

It was also an extraordinary way to travel without going anywhere. Books took me to distant galaxies and imaginary civilisations, often on journeys more memorable than any holiday.

But there was something disappointing about that early education. Almost all those imagined futures came from North America or Europe. Africa was largely absent. It seemed that the continent where humanity began had been excluded from imagining where humanity was going.

Then South African author Lauren Beukes came along with Moxyland and Zoo City, set in a future Cape Town and Johannesburg. Nigeria’s Nnedi Okorafor, with Who Fears Death and the Binti series, created futures connected to African cultures. Botswana’s Tlotlo Tsamaase has added a wonderfully unsettling dimension with Womb City.

And now, while preparing my in-flight entertainment for an upcoming trip, I discovered Africa Risen: A New Era of Speculative Fiction, an anthology of 32 stories from Africa and its diaspora. Edited by Sheree Renée Thomas, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki and Zelda Knight, it won both the World Fantasy Award and the Locus Award for best anthology in 2023.

Amazingly, I had found a major collection of African science fiction through an app, instead of on a bookshelf. It was an exciting addition to my travel tech.

Now Spotify is making that travelling library considerably bigger. This week, it announced its largest expansion of audiobooks yet, taking the service from 22 markets to more than 180 by the end of 2026.

Much of the continent is being added, in an expansion that offers an initial catalogue of more than 350,000 titles across over 120 languages, through an app used by more than 750-million people worldwide.

For travellers, the appeal is immediate. Spotify has long provided music and podcasts for flights and road trips, and now books can join the same library. Automatic bookmarking allows a book started at home to continue on a phone.

A sleep timer would also be appreciated by anyone who has woken up on a flight to discover that the story has progressed without them.

Another cool feature, Page Match, connects printed books and ebooks with audio versions. Readers can scan the page they are reading to find the corresponding passage in the audiobook, allowing them to switch from bedtime reading to listening while travelling.

In some markets, eligible Premium subscribers receive 12 hours of audiobook listening monthly. In Africa, the main offering will be Audiobooks+, an additional subscription providing a monthly listening allowance. Individual titles can also be purchased.

Duncan Bruce, Spotify director of partnerships and licensing, said during a virtual media briefing on Monday that its publishing arrangements could help authors reach international audiences.

“For local self-published authors who might not have a publisher representing them, they can also upload their local language books through Spotify for Authors,” he said. “So really helping more local stories meet readers and listeners so much more easily.”

Bruce told Gadget: “We’ve already got relationships with many African distributors and partners as well, and we see this as a huge opportunity.”

The economics are especially significant for smaller publishers, given the cost of narrators and professional recording.

“We really will urge and support and work with local publishers and authors to help create audiobooks, and we’ve seen that in other markets. By our entrance, it has found an economically viable model for people to invest in the catalogue, and so we are really excited to help grow the catalogue together.”

For someone who grew up searching for African voices in imaginary futures, the prospect is enticing. A Setswana science-fiction novel could find listeners in Europe, and an isiZulu audiobook could reach audiences around the world.

“This is very early stages,” he acknowledged. “It’s going to take some time, but we really look forward to working with all of our publishers around the world to help grow the catalogue.”

* Arthur Goldstuck is CEO of World Wide Worx, editor-in-chief of Gadget.co.za, editor of GadgetWings, and author of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to AI – The African Edge”.

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