It has always been stated that the best
way to hide information from an African is by writing it. Africans
are well known for the poorest reading habits. Every motivational
talk I have attended, has had to mention reading as the best way to
redeem Africa. Reading, on a number of cases has been sought after as
the best way to run away from the cyclic cycle of poverty affecting
the developing countries. Finding the number of people in Africa who
can read a book and complete it is a tricky task. Many people have
always blamed this problem (poor reading) to limited availability of
reading materials. Most of the materials are for sale, at prices most
people would not want to reserve for reading purposes.
With the invent of web
2.0, more information has been readily availed for almost all
people who can access even the slowest Internet. The past five
years have seen most of the African countries more than double their
Internet Penetration numbers1.
Internet has become cheaper, and more available on the move.
There are no concrete numbers on our
reading habits and the increasing availability of Internet but many
people are arguing that it is not the absence of what to read that
created this bad reading habit, but the culture. A lot of information
is available in the print media, either free of charge to access but
not all is read.
Recently, on one of the discussion
forums2,
(I-network) we discussed how government was looking at facilitating
Members of Parliament (MPs) with laptops, smart phones (actually
Ipads) to have more access to discussion documents while in house or
any where because some MPs complained that the printed reports are
just bulky. It however was deduced that this will not change the
reading habits of the house. MPs will continue coming to the floor
with out information about the discussion topic.
With the advent
of web 2.0 Internet, Internet use and reading has increased
but what is discussed is fun, jokes, obnoxious news and some few
quotes. Social networks are now responsible for over 28% of Internet
Penetration in Africa3.
It is very hard to find some one reading and linking other friends to
some piece of good reading material if it is developmental. If some
one does share material, very few people will follow it, but let it
be a joke, nude pictures, music and name it in that line, the
followers will be in millions.
Can some one comfortably state that
developing countries where cursed when it comes to reading and
nothing will ever change the trends? Do you think the higher Internet
penetration will ultimately change the course with time? How can we
use this almost free resource (Internet) to advance our reading
culture as we know reading is knowledge and knowledge is wealth; a
better way to move away from the enslavement of poverty.
REF:
http://www.africa-uganda-business-travel-guide.com/east-africa-internet-usage-slightly-over-25m.html
1http://royal.pingdom.com/2012/04/19/world-internet-population-has-doubled-in-the-last-5-years/
2http://next.dgroups.org/iicd/i-network/
3http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats1.htm
t all depends on what people are interested in. I like reading through the print media daily and visiting some online sites whenever i have access. But rarely read the bible. Other people read the bible 24/7 but never see through the print media or material online. May 1st 2010 was my wedding day and a white friend handed me a gift of a book titled, "The state of Africa by Martin Meredeth". Iam ashamed that i have read even a quarter of that book. So, would someone rate me as person with a poor or good reading culture? Iam not sure where i belong.
ReplyDeleteSurely, higher internet penetration will change this poor reading culture with time. What needs to be done is to target the interests of different people.
Davis K.