Daraja Press publishes to reclaim the past, contest the present and invent the future.

Daraja Press is a not-for-profit publisher, based in Québec, Canada, that seeks to reclaim the past, contest the present and invent the future. Daraja is the KiSwahili word for ‘bridge’. As its name suggests, Daraja Press seeks to build bridges, especially bridges of solidarity between and amongst movements, intellectuals and those engaged in struggles for a just world.

We seek to build upon, develop and support interconnections between emancipatory struggles of the oppressed and exploited across the world. In a phrase, our aim is to nurture reflection, shelter hope and inspire audacity.

Our advisory board is comprised of the following: Kali Akuno, David Austin, Nnimmo Bassey, Bill Fletcher Jr, Molly Kane+, Wangui Kimari, Micheline Ravololonarisoa, Coumba Toure, Walter Turner, Michael Neocosmos, Joan Kuyek+. We would like to acknowledge the many people who have provided advice and reviews of proposals including Nigel C Gibson, Kevin B Anderson, Wende Marshall, Micere Githae Mugo, Brian Murphy, Howard Waitzkin, Richard Pithouse, Joe Oloka-Onyango, Sylvia Tamale, Issa Shivji, Zarina Patel, Zahid Rajan and many others. Our thanks also to Kate McDonnell who does most of our design work, and Jason Toney who helps with marketing and distribution support. (+ members of the board of directors)

Daraja Press publishes print books, e-books, pamphlets, campaign materials, and video and audio content, including recent series of more than 100 podcasts under the theme Organising in the time of Covid-19.

We actively encourage cooperation with other publishers and have co-published with some 20 other publishers. Many of our titles are published in Kenya by Zand Graphics Ltd for distribution at local prices in East Africa.

Where possible, we make the full text of our publications available for free download as PDF.

Praise for Daraja Press

Through its republishing of historical works, Daraja Press reminds us of the long history of emancipatory thinking on our continent; but it also introduces us to new thinking, and makes connections (builds ‘bridges’) between the current emancipatory intellectual work of Africa and that of others engaged in emancipatory struggle throughout the globe. Reflecting on the words we read (and those we hear, through Daraja’s podcasts) inspires us with hope, and gives us courage. Without Daraja, the world would be an infinitely poorer place.

Anne Harley, University of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa

At a time when deep and complex issues are treated superficially at local and global levels, Daraja Press publishes books that help unearth the foundational basis of understanding and dealing with the complexities.

Nnimmo Bassey, co-recipient of the 2010 Right Livelihood Award, also known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize”

The unassuming Daraja Press works diligently to produce alternative and counter narratives from a postcolonial perspective. It is positioned as one of the few “Davids” facing off the powerful “Goliaths” in the arena of academic publishing.

Sylvia Tamale, author, Decolonization and Afro-Feminism and African Sexualities

Daraja is a crucial publisher of radical thought from and for popular struggles around the world, centring the voices of organic intellectuals from today’s movements and grounded in our own activist histories.

Laurence Cox, co-editor, activist/academic social movements journal Interface

Daraja is a critical building instrument for our revolutionary movements and connecting them throughout the world.

Kali Akuno, co-founder, Cooperation Jackson, Mississippi

Daraja Press is a crucial node for advancing the collective struggles for the liberation of oppressed people around the world.

Zophia Edwards, Asst Prof, Sociology, John Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA

Daraja has the unique talent for picking important but often dense academic topics and books and then transforming them into lucid and accessible reading. Additionally, their modest pricing, clean design, and efficient distribution of print is commendable.

Bhakti Shringarpure, Associate Professor, English & WGSS, University of Connecticut, Editor-in-chief, Warscapes

Reflection, critical analysis, hope as a revolutionary act. These all describe what Daraja Press brings into the world via its pamphlets, books, podcasts, and special series such as “Organizing in the time of COVID-19.”

Maywa Montenegro de Wit, Assistant Professor, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, Center for Justice, UC Santa Cruz

Following – and expanding upon – the paths forged by such visionary publishers as New Beacon Press and Race & Class – Daraja Press continues to elucidate, inspire, and push the boundaries of writing from Africa and the diaspora – in the richest sense of both.

Ramsey Kanaan – Publisher, PM Press

Without fearless words, silence would roam free. Daraja voices the words tyranny can’t silence. — Tariq Mehmood, an award-winning novelist and documentary filmmaker.

An amazing achievement. Daraja Press books have rescued revolutionary thought and hope from the past three decades of neoliberal gloom and doom.

Issa Shivji, Professor Emeritus of Public Law & First Julius Nyerere Professor of Pan-African Studies, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Daraja Press has created a truly intersectional dialogue between Marxism and critical theory, on the one hand, and, on the other, anti-imperialist thinking emanating from the Global South, especially in terms of African liberation. It is a unique and truly global platform.

Kevin B. Anderson, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, UC-Santa Barbara

Daraja can be relied upon to offer some of the most probing analysis of the most urgent challenges of our time. Preciously and presciently, the press exemplifies one of the most coherent visions of the role of written ideas in unfinished struggles for human liberation.

Jane Anna Gordon, author of Statelessness and Contemporary Enslavement and co-editor (with Drucilla Cornell) of Creolizing Rosa Luxemburg

Daraja Press has become one of the most innovative and exciting publishers in the world today. — Howard Waitzkin, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Health Sciences and Sociology, University of New Mexico

Daraja, the KiSwahili Word for “bridge” is just that, a bridge between radical angers, something we need so desperately in this world of fragmented suffering and multiple resistances. A wonderful selection of books, a breeze of stimulation for those of us who get lost so easily in our own locality or our own continent.

John Holloway, author Hope in Hopeless Times

I want to mention that Daraja’s publications have truly outstanding themes, and I am glad there is a publisher centering the kind of work you put out

Leonardo E. Figueroa Helland, Chair and Associate Professor of Environmental Policy and Sustainability Management (EPSM), The New School, New York

From its inception, Daraja Press has been courageous, pathbreaking and unorthodox in its approach to publishing. It has sought out new titles and encouraged writers–new and not-so-new–to come forward and bring their thinking to a global audience. Daraja Press has not shied away from controversy, offering works from a wide range of viewpoints. In every case, the presentation and quality of anything offered by Daraja Press has been top quality.

Bill Fletcher, Jr., trade unionist/writer, coeditor, Claim No EasyVictories

Daraja Press addresses head-on, creatively with critical reflection, the challenges of colonialism, capitalist exploitation, ecological disaster, racism, and sexism in the global struggles for dignity, freedom, liberation, and redemption among and from the proverbial Damned of the Earth.

Lewis R. Gordon, Chair of Awards, The Caribbean Philosophical Association, and Distinguished Scholar, The Most Honourable PJ Patterson Centre for Africa-Caribbean Advocacy


Daraja Press’s publisher Firoze Manji is the recipient of the 2021 Nicolás Cristóbal Guillén Batista Lifetime Achievement Award from the Caribbean Philosophical Association. He is a Transnational Institute (TNI) Associate. In addition, Love after Babel and other poems by Chandramohan S was the winner of the Nicolás Cristóbal Guillén Batista Outstanding Book Award from the Caribbean Philosophical Association, and Revolutionary Hope vs Free-Market Fantasies by John S Saul has been nominated for the Rik Davidson / Studies in PoliticalEconomy Book Prize in Political Economy.


Latest Catalogue

You can download our latest catalogue here: