Solani Ngobeni

Solani Ngobeni is currently the Director of Publications at the Africa Institute of South Africa where he is responsible for publishing scholarly books, monographs, conference proceedings, occasional papers as well as a peer-reviewed and Department of Higher Education and Training accredited journal Africa Insight. He holds a masters degree in publishing from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He is currently enrolled for a DPhil in Political Sciences at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. His thesis is titled The Politics and State of Scholarly Publishing in South Africa: the case of university presses, namely, Witwatersrand University Press, University of Cape Town Press, University of South Africa Press, University of Kwazulu-Natal Press and the HSRC Press (2000-2010), Solani started his publishing career at the Institute for Global Dialogue, Johannesburg in 1999 before joining Juta Academic Publishers/University of Cape Town Press as a Higher Education Publisher in 2000. In 2004 he was appointed as a Managing Director of Juta Learning – a Juta company.
In 2007 he was chosen as the South African Finalist in the International Young Publisher of the Year Award under the auspices of the British Council.
Solani is a published author and has presented papers at both local and international conferences. He is also a regular participant at local and international book fairs such as London, Cape Town, Frankfurt, Nigeria, Nairobi, amongst others.
He is the editor of a recently published book titled Scholarly Publishing in Africa: opportunities and impediments, Africa Institute, 2010. His research interest includes the politics of race in knowledge production, the state of research and scholarly publishing in Africa, and issues around book distribution in Africa.