THE government and the private sector should venture into a campaign to take books to children in the rural areas as a way to promote a reading culture, a retired University of Dar es Salaam don has suggested.
Prof Saida Yahya-Othman said that children were big audience yet to be reached out. She was speaking during launching of the Uongozi Institute Leadership Research Centre and former President Benjamin Mkapa Memoir in Kiswahili in Dar es Salaam on Thursday.
“Let’s think about the children at the grassroot level in villages. We should take books to them. We should encourage them reading books as their big entertainment. That’s very big audience,” she said at a panel discussion about promoting a reading culture that was part of events in the launching ceremony.
The English and Kiswahili linguistics scholar who has taught and published extensively in the area, said the notion that children spend most of their time watching cartoons was misplaced because they were generally few, mostly based in urban areas.
Another panelist, Mr Zitto Kabwe suggested of tax relief to publishers to make books more affordable to low income earners.
“The first measure should be policy. Reading should not be costly. We should forget about taxes in anything to do with books publishing. We should abolish taxes in the books industry to lower publishing costs,” said the ACT Wazalendo leader.
Another panelist, Mkuki Nyota, the Director of Mkuki na Nyota Publishers suggested that there should be a campaign to take books to national and regional libraries.
“We should make sure our libraries have books. When we fill our libraries with books we will initiate a revolution in reading culture,” he said.
“We should create an environment where reading should be taken as pleasure. We should encourage people to build a reading habit and take reading for pleasure,” he said.
Professor Kitila Mkumbo, a Member of Parliament for Ubungo in Dar es Salaam, suggested community libraries should be revived as part of measures to build a community with a reading culture.
“It is time we revived community libraries so as to build a community that take reading as a habit,” said Prof Mkumbo, also a University of Dar es Salaam don.
He said it was time for community’s main source of information is not hearsay but reading books and other scientific sources.
“We Tanzanians do not like constructive debates. We seem to be averse to alternative thinking. We should encourage the community to like alternative thinking… which will be possible by promoting a reading culture,” he said.
The government could use the torch race to promote reading culture among Tanzanians and would be assured of positive result because the race cover all over the country, he suggested.
“We should promote reading culture in the torch race beginning next year and evaluate the progress after say five years,” he said.
The Minister of State in the President’s Office (Public Service Management and Good Governance), Ms Jenista Mhagama launched the Uongozi Institute Leadership Resource Centre that was recently relocated to the Julius Nyerere International Convention Centre.
The event also debuted ‘Maisha Yangu, Kusudi Langu’ a Kiswahili edition of the memoirs of former President, the late Benjamin Mkapa.
The first English edition ‘My Life, My Purpose: A Tanzanian President Remembers’, was launched in 2019 by former president, the late John Magufuli.
