Distribution of edition covering party in Africa (8)
I believe the answer is:
issuance
'distribution' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'edition covering party in africa' is the wordplay.
'edition' becomes 'issue' (I've seen this before).
'covering' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'party in africa' becomes 'anc' (African National Congress).
'issue' placed around 'anc' is 'ISSUANCE'.
'of' acts as a link.
(Other definitions for issuance that I've seen before include "Act of sending out" , "publication" , "promulgation" .)