Ama Dadson

You are the CEO and Founder of AkooBooks Audio, a streaming platform for Black/African audiobooks. Can you tell us briefly what prompted you to start AkooBooks and what the response in Ghana has been to the creation of a streaming audiobook market?

AkooBooks began from something very personal. My mother is a children’s author who lost her sight, and I saw first-hand how losing access to the printed page could also mean losing access to books and stories. At the same time, I realized how few African books were available in audio and how rarely African stories were being heard in authentic African voices.

That led me to launch AkooBooks in Ghana in 2017, initially as an audiobook publisher and producer, and ultimately as a digital platform for Black/African literature. We have since expanded into ebooks as well, because increasingly we see the opportunity as broader than audiobooks alone: how do we make African books accessible digitally, in multiple formats, to readers and listeners wherever they are?

The response in Ghana has been encouraging, but we are also creating a market rather than simply entering an established one. Audiobook listening is still relatively new, so discovery, affordability, mobile access, and awareness are critical. What excites me is seeing people who may not think of themselves as traditional book buyers embrace books through their phones and through audio.

We are also learning that the African audiobook market will not necessarily develop by simply copying established markets. Mobile-first access, local payment systems, pricing, data costs, and institutional channels such as schools and libraries all matter.

So part of our work is not only publishing audiobooks, but figuring out what a sustainable African digital publishing ecosystem can look like.

Can you tell us about any trends you are seeing in what types of stories/content work for the African market? How does that relate to what you’re seeing globally?

One of the first things I would say is that there isn’t one “African market.” Audiences want everything from fiction, thrillers and romance to biographies, history, business, children’s and young adult books, and books in African languages.

What consistently matters is relevance and authenticity: stories in which people recognize their histories, cultures, humor, and experiences.

Another trend I am seeing is growing interest in African stories traveling across formats, languages, and borders. I was recently at the Mashariki Creative Economy Expo in Dar es Salaam, where I participated in discussions around trading literary rights and met with authors, publishers, and rights holders. We were looking at how African books can move into audio and digital formats, into languages such as English and Kiswahili, and into markets beyond the countries where they were originally published.

A Kiswahili novel, for example, might have a life as a Kiswahili audiobook, an English translation, and then an English audiobook. That is one piece of African intellectual property potentially reaching several different audiences without losing its original identity.

One thing that became very clear again at the recent Mashariki Creative Economy Expo 2026 in Dar es Salaam is that while there is no single African market, we should not recreate in the digital world the fragmentation that has historically made it difficult for African books to travel across physical borders. Digital distribution gives us an opportunity to think regionally and pan-African, while still respecting very real differences in language, culture, and readership.

We often talk about taking African books to the world, but there is an equally important opportunity to get African books traveling much more effectively within Africa itself.

That connects directly with what is happening globally. Audiences increasingly move easily between print, ebooks, audiobooks, podcasts and other forms of storytelling. Africa’s opportunity is not to build a separate digital ecosystem, but to ensure African intellectual property participates fully in the global one, while circulating much more effectively within Africa itself.

How are you producing these audiobooks — are you focusing on local production, working with technology partners, etc.?

We strongly believe in local production and African creative talent. We work with professional narrators, actors, authors, studios, and audio engineers because authentic voice, pronunciation, and cultural context matter enormously.

Increasingly, however, I think of “local” in a pan-African rather than purely Ghanaian sense. As AkooBooks acquires and distributes stories from other African markets, we need the right voices, languages and production partnerships in those markets too. My recent conversations in East Africa reinforced that for me.

That means we shouldn’t automatically bring every production back to Accra. A Kiswahili audiobook, for example, should draw on Kiswahili-speaking creative talent and production expertise. I see AkooBooks increasingly helping to build a network of African audio production, rather than simply a single production centre.

At the same time, we combine human creativity with technology. We use digital production and quality-assurance tools and work with technology partners to improve workflows, distribution and discoverability. AI is increasingly useful for tasks such as script preparation, quality assurance, metadata, discoverability, and marketing.

I think the important distinction is between using AI to replace creativity and using AI to remove friction from the creative process. For African audio, where production economics can be challenging, that distinction matters enormously.

The goal isn’t technology for technology’s sake. It is using technology to make it economically possible to produce more African stories, in more African languages, for more listeners, while preserving the human performance and cultural authenticity that make those stories distinctive.

You are also the 2026 Audio Ambassador for Frankfurter Buchmesse. Can you tell us what the Audio Ambassador does?

For me, being an Audio Ambassador is about bringing different perspectives from the international audio industry into the Frankfurt conversation and taking those conversations back into markets where audio is developing under very different conditions.

I am particularly interested in representing markets such as Africa, where audio has enormous potential, but the ecosystem is developing differently from Europe or North America. Mobile access, affordability, local-language content, payment systems, rights, production capacity, and distribution all influence how our audiobook markets grow.

It is also an opportunity to connect publishers, platforms, producers, and rights holders across markets. I see part of my role as connecting conversations that can sometimes happen separately: what I hear in Frankfurt about the global audio business with what I hear in Accra, Dar es Salaam, Nairobi, Kampala, and other African publishing markets.

That is increasingly important because the future of African audio isn’t simply about producing audiobooks. It is about creating an ecosystem in which African intellectual property can travel between countries, languages, formats and audiences.

So I see the Ambassador role as both bringing African audio into the international conversation and bringing international opportunities, partnerships, and knowledge back into African publishing.

Do you think the global audiobook market will continue to grow? If so, what do you think will continue to fuel that growth?

Absolutely. And I think some of the most interesting future growth will come from places currently described as emerging audiobook markets.

Smartphone adoption, changing reading and listening habits, streaming, digital payments, and better distribution are all lowering barriers to audio. AI and other production technologies may also help reduce the cost and time required to bring more books into audio.

But I think rights and languages will be equally important drivers.

At the recent Mashariki Creative Economy Expo 2026 in Dar es Salaam, we discussed and traded literary rights across audio, digital, translation, and territories. I feel very strongly that an enormous body of African intellectual property has barely begun to unlock its digital and audio potential.

We talk about technology reducing the cost of audiobook production, but technology alone cannot unlock a book. The rights have to be available, discoverable, appropriately valued, and structured to make production commercially viable. That is why I think stronger rights trading, particularly within Africa, will be an important part of the next phase of audio growth.

The next wave of growth won’t only come from producing new books. It will also come from giving existing stories new lives — in audio, in new languages, and across new markets.

And as global audio companies expand into emerging markets, we need to think carefully about what kind of ecosystem that growth creates. New markets shouldn’t simply become new consumers of content produced elsewhere. Growth should also strengthen local publishers, producers, platforms, narrators, and creative talent.

The next chapter of audiobook growth is not simply about producing more audio. It is about who gets to listen, whose stories are available, which languages are represented, how those stories travel — and who gets to participate in the economics of that growth.