Mr Solani Ngobeni holds a Masters degree in publishing from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

He has over 15 years experience in the publishing of both academic and scholarly books.

He was the Director of Publications at the Africa Institute of South Africa (AISA), an institute of the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) where he was responsible for publishing scholarly books, monographs, conference proceedings, occasional papers as well as a peer-reviewed and an IBSS and Department of Higher Education and Training accredited journal Africa Insight.

He 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 announced as South Africa’s International Young Publisher of the Year under the auspices of the British Council in the United Kingdom. He 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, Nigeria, Nairobi, Frankfurt amongst others.

He is the editor of a book titled Scholarly Publishing in Africa: opportunities and impediments, Africa Institute, 2010. His monograph tilled Scholarly publishing: the challenges facing the African university press was published by the Africa Studies Centre, Leiden, Netherlands where he was a Research Fellow in 2012.

His research interest includes the politics of knowledge production, the state of research and scholarly publishing in Africa, and issues around book distribution in Africa.