The aim of this article is to show to what extent the context of production of West African literature in English, meaning the way literary works are written, published, distributed and read, necessarily calls in question a number of presuppositions concerning the distinction between so-called ‘popular’ or locally produced writing and the texts of internationally published authors (for example, Ayi Kwei Armah) whose works alone are seen as representative of what passes in the West for ‘African literature’.