<p><!-- BEGIN THEIA POST SLIDER --></p>
<!-- WP QUADS Content Ad Plugin v. 2.0.95 -->
<div class="quads-location quads-ad4" id="quads-ad4" style="float:none;margin:0px;">

</div>

<p> ;</p><div class="baw4fwTN" style="clear:both;float:left;width:100%;margin:0 0 20px 0;"><script async src="https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script>

<!-- TV -->

<ins class="adsbygoogle"

 style="display:block"

 data-ad-client="ca-pub-4403533287178375"

 data-ad-slot="4399361195"

 data-ad-format="auto"

 data-full-width-responsive="true"></ins>

<script>

 (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});

</script></div>
<p>By Habib Sani Galadima</p><div class="GRA5hM9d" style="clear:both;float:left;width:100%;margin:0 0 20px 0;"><script async src="https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script>

<!-- TV -->

<ins class="adsbygoogle"

 style="display:block"

 data-ad-client="ca-pub-4403533287178375"

 data-ad-slot="4399361195"

 data-ad-format="auto"

 data-full-width-responsive="true"></ins>

<script>

 (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});

</script></div>
<p>In the 1960s, South Korea was poor, dependent on American aid, and still struggling with the scars of war. Then President Park Chung-hee changed the script. His government blocked most consumer imports and poured resources into industries that could export. Credit, subsidies, policy direction; all of it was aimed outward. By 1969, exports were growing at 35.3 percent each year. In the 1970s, they kept climbing at over 25 percent annually. Over two decades, South Korea’s economy grew by nearly 10 percent a year.</p>
<p>The turning point was clear. Instead of surviving on what came in, they built power by focusing on what went out. This same logic applies to language, especially to the future of Hausa.</p>
<p>For decades, translation into Hausa served as a cultural intake valve; bringing foreign ideas, religious teachings, policy language, and literary forms within reach of local audiences. This inward-facing strategy was institutionalized in 1933, when Rupert East and the Translation Bureau (later known as Gaskiya Corporation) launched a historic literature contest. The goal was practical: Western education had arrived in Northern Nigeria, schools were filling up, but there were no Hausa books to read.</p><div class="nm4hmuPZ" style="clear:both;float:left;width:100%;margin:0 0 20px 0;"><script async src="https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script>

<ins class="adsbygoogle"

 style="display:block; text-align:center;"

 data-ad-layout="in-article"

 data-ad-format="fluid"

 data-ad-client="ca-pub-4403533287178375"

 data-ad-slot="6550225277"></ins>

<script>

 (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});

</script></div>
<p>That contest birthed a canon. It gave us Ruwan Bagaja by Abubakar Imam, Gandoki by Muhammadu Bello Kagara, Shaihu Umar by Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Idon Matambayi by Muhammadu Gwarzo, and Jiki Magayi by John Tafida Umaru and Rupert East. These were not just books; they were tools for reading, models for fiction, and blueprints for cultural imagination.</p>
<!-- WP QUADS Content Ad Plugin v. 2.0.95 -->
<div class="quads-location quads-ad1" id="quads-ad1" style="float:none;margin:0px;">

</div>

<!-- WP QUADS Content Ad Plugin v. 2.0.95 -->
<div class="quads-location quads-ad5" id="quads-ad5" style="float:none;margin:0px;">

</div>

<p>Yet today, the imbalance is unmistakable. Nearly all cultural translation still flows inward, despite the fact that Hausa literature now spans generations, genres, and thousands of titles. We are no longer short on reading material. What we lack is export.</p>
<p>As a result, most outsiders now know Hausa culture through social media behavior, not through its stories. The literary gaze of the mid-to-late 20th century has faded. In its place is a shallow feed, not a studied archive. Our cultural signals are reduced to online patterns. Our worldview is flattened by algorithms.</p>
<p>The hunger for culturally grounded stories is not the problem. The gap lies in output direction. Hausa literature has grown in abundance from contemporary novels (known as Adabin Kasuwar Kano), oral chronicles, audio dramas, and digital fiction communities. But most of this intellectual output remains sealed within Hausa, or reduced to summaries when it crosses into English. This isn’t just a publishing shortfall, it is a missed tool of cultural diplomacy.</p>
<p>A language spoken by tens of millions across West Africa, rich in rhythm and moral nuance, should be shaping global discourse through its stories. The same way Korea exported Samsung and cinema to build national identity, Hausa can export ‘Magana Jari Ce’or ‘So Aljannar Duniya, not just as books, but as blueprints of thought, ethical scaffolding, and communal logic.</p>
<p>But cultural export needs architecture. It means funding skilled translation from Hausa into global languages. It means backing writers who carry both the language and the ambition. It means understanding that prestige is not inherited through English, but built by those willing to make Hausa visible to the world. Until then, we keep importing ideas we already understand in a language that is not our own.</p>
<p>A people who do not share their worldview will one day find it narrated by outsiders. That is the quiet danger we face. Hausa is not vanishing, but it is being compressed. Our literature, our metaphors, our moral reasoning; all remain alive among us, but they rarely cross borders in our own voice. Others interpret us through news cycles and trending hashtags, not through the stories we wrote ourselves.</p>
<p><!-- END THEIA POST SLIDER -->
<!-- WP QUADS Content Ad Plugin v. 2.0.95 -->
<div class="quads-location quads-ad4" id="quads-ad4" style="float:none;margin:0px;">

</div>
</p>
<script async src="https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script>

<ins class="adsbygoogle"

 style="display:block"

 data-ad-format="autorelaxed"

 data-ad-client="ca-pub-4403533287178375"

 data-ad-slot="1004305389"></ins>

<script>

 (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});

</script>
<!-- WP QUADS Content Ad Plugin v. 2.0.95 -->
<div class="quads-location quads-ad3" id="quads-ad3" style="float:none;margin:0px;">

</div>


