Over time, Africa seems de-booked. Long before bookstores elsewhere started succumbing to online stores, African bookshops have been struggling to survive. Partly because local authorship isn't thriving, partly because foreign publishers got packing, partly because governments have yet to wake up to the twin dangers of illiteracy and ignorance. It pays dictators and despots to use both to suppress, repress and depress the populace!
Well, the Arab Spring is reaffirming history's truism: not for long.
In my native Nigeria, for example, we even took development assistance and world bank funds for book development. Nothing to show for it all, folks, nothing! Publishers are closing shop, writers are languishing, piracy is racing wild, libraries are derelict, reading is declining...and our governments at all levels, parents and guardians, natural and religious leaders, the media and our diaspora will not come together to ACT! Shame.
With the under-funding of our education sector and the debasement of the teaching profession over the last three decades, lecturers and researchers aren't writing or publishing. We have thus been fueling and feeding the brain drain monster.
Final result? The BOOK business is Dying! And PEOPLE are hardly READING! Pity.
Press Nigeria, tap Africa. Common story.
NEPAD is still a paper-tiger, alas. Will it wake up for BOOK Business, now? Hope. You never lose with hope...
