<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Walk into any major Moroccan bookshop today and look closely at the children’s shelves. You will find, overwhelmingly, foreign books. Colourful covers, translated or directly imported titles, characters with European names, stories set in snow-covered mountain villages or Parisian apartments. At first glance, this might look like richness \u2014 a generous window onto international literature. But look more closely, and a more uncomfortable reality emerges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many of these books are not the best titles their countries of origin have to offer. They are often books that did not perform particularly well in their own market, backlist titles, series that have run their course, books that foreign publishers are simply looking to offload elsewhere once their natural life cycle comes to an end. Morocco becomes a natural destination for this surplus \u2014 a secondary market where what no longer sells well at home can continue to be sold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A legacy that still weighs heavily<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It is difficult to discuss this phenomenon without acknowledging its historical roots. The sheer dominance of French books on Moroccan shelves is not simply a market accident. It is the direct continuation of an old relationship, inherited from the colonial period, when the French language, the French school system and the French book imposed themselves as the default reference. Decades later, this habit continues to shape the publishing landscape, almost out of inertia. We keep importing because we have always imported. We keep treating the French book as a given, without always asking whether it is genuinely the best choice for a Moroccan child today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n An asymmetry that should give us pause<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Here is what makes this situation particularly striking: this logic almost never works the other way around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Walk into a bookshop in France or in England, and look at the children’s shelves. You will find an almost exclusively national literature \u2014 French authors for French children, British authors for British children. Foreign books are present, certainly, but marginally, carefully curated, often already award-winning or critically recognised before they are even translated. You will never find shelves saturated with unsold Moroccan, Lebanese or Senegalese surplus that failed to sell in its country of origin. The French market protects its own narrative. It chooses carefully what it imports, and it continues, overwhelmingly, to nourish its children with its own stories, its own authors, its own cultural references.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This asymmetry reveals something important: it is not a natural law of the book trade that markets exchange their productions on equal terms. It is a choice. A choice that France makes for itself, by protecting and valuing its own children’s literature. And it is a choice that Morocco has not, so far, made sufficiently for itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A parent facing an impossible dilemma<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Imagine a Moroccan parent walking into a bookshop with a sincere and beautiful intention: to nurture their child’s love of reading. They search, they look, they browse. And they find themselves facing a terribly narrow choice. On one side, a massive supply of foreign literature \u2014 abundant in quantity, but often mediocre in quality, and culturally disconnected from their child’s life. On the other side, a Moroccan publishing scene that is still fragile, still young, that has not had the time or the resources to fully develop, and that is not yet enough to meet families’ appetite for reading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This parent wants their child to read. They believe deeply in the value of books. But they find themselves, almost despite themselves, filling the family bookshelf with stories that speak neither of their country, nor of their culture, nor of the life their child actually lives. This is not a choice made willingly. It is a default choice, forced by the absence of sufficient alternatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A double impoverishment<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n This situation creates a double impoverishment, almost invisible because it happens slowly, book after book, year after year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first impoverishment is qualitative. Moroccan children, for lack of better options, often grow up with books that are not the best that world children’s literature has to offer. They are second-tier books, chosen not for their literary or artistic excellence, but because they are available, cheap to import, and easy to sell in volume.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The second impoverishment is one of identity. A child who grows up reading almost exclusively stories set elsewhere, populated by characters who do not resemble them, who never recognises in a book the light of their own sky, the texture of their own language, the warmth of their own family \u2014 this child grows up with an inner library that does not truly belong to them. They become a reader, certainly, but a reader in permanent exile from their own world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why this happens<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n This phenomenon is not the result of any conspiracy, nor of particular ill intent. It is simply the consequence of economic logic combined with historical legacy. For a foreign publisher, the Moroccan market represents an opportunity to offload stock at low cost, in a language already widely understood locally, without having to invest in creating new content. It is fast, it is profitable, and it requires no creative risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For distributors and certain Moroccan retailers, these books also represent a simple solution: ready-made catalogues, available volumes, proven logistics. Building a local offering, by contrast, requires time, investment, patience and genuine editorial risk-taking. Economically, it is far simpler to import than to create.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What this means for the future<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n If this trend continues unchecked, the long-term consequences are serious. An entire generation of Moroccan children could grow up associating reading with worlds that are never their own, internalising the idea that important stories always happen elsewhere, written by others, for other children. This is not simply a commercial problem. It is a profound cultural issue, touching on how an entire generation will learn to see itself, to tell its own story, to exist within its own literature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The role a publisher like Agafay Books can play<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n This is precisely the situation we want to change. Not by rejecting foreign literature \u2014 it has its place, and diversity of origin always enriches a child, provided it is chosen with discernment rather than received by default. But by building, alongside it, a genuine, high-quality Moroccan offering. Books conceived, written and illustrated with the same level of rigour as the best international productions, but rooted in the reality, the language, the imagination and the beauty of Morocco.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A Moroccan parent should never have to choose between quality and identity. They should be able to find both, united in the same book, on the same shelf, within their child’s reach. And just as France protects and celebrates its own children’s literature, Morocco has every right \u2014 and every duty \u2014 to do the same for its own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is the gap we intend to fill, one book at a time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Walk into any major Moroccan bookshop today and look closely at the children’s shelves. You will find, overwhelmingly, foreign books. Colourful covers, translated or directly imported titles, characters with European names, stories set in snow-covered mountain villages or Parisian apartments. At first glance, this might look like richness \u2014 a generous window onto international literature. 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