100 million and counting
Introducing HippoBooks – LivresHippo.
People are sometimes surprised to hear that French is spoken in Africa. They are even more surprised when they learn that Africa is the continent with the most French speakers in the entire world. Over 100 million people in 31 countries in Africa have French as their first or second language.
Yet these people are often forgotten. So at the time when the Africa Bible Commentary was launched, the leader of the French division of the United Bible Societies thought it necessary to remind the team, ‘Do not forget us!’ In other words, don’t produce resources only for those who can speak English.
Others had made the same plea, and that is why the Africa Bible Commentary is now available in all the major colonial languages of Africa: English, French and Portuguese. But that is only one book. What about other resources? A lecturer at a Bible College in Francophone Africa appealed to me in desperation, saying ‘There are no books we can get for our students.’
Langham was already working with publishers in three English-speaking African countries to produce HippoBooks for seminary students and college graduates in Africa. So we extended LivresHippo to Francophone Africa. This week we heard that the first book has been published by a consortium of publishers from Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon, and Benin.
The author is someone who has a long history with Langham – Solomon Andria, originally from Madagascar, but currently living in Cote d’Ivoire, and known throughout French-speaking Africa for his work with the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students.
This book is not a one-off printing, but is part of a much larger Africa Bible Commentary Series. So Solomon’s commentary on Romans will soon be followed by a commentary on Jeremiah, written in French by an author from the Congo. If you can’t read French, you can get an English translation, published by Zondervan in conjunction with Hippo.
And work has already started on a French translation of Hippo’s bestseller, African Christian Ethics.
LivresHippo is up and running!
by Isobel Stevenson, Langham Literature
Further Publication Information
Romains
By Solomon Andria
