The Ghana National Book Fair

The Ghana National Book Fair ended on Saturday, September 29. It was eventful in some respects. We got to meet the Second Lady of Ghana, a librarian who was very excited to chat on home schooling with yours truly. She was impressed and supportive of the initiative. The Fair was launched with speakers from very important Ghanaians including Ebo Whyte. He, and the others, discussed how Ghanaian publishers need to publish materials that matter to Ghana and Africa. That they need to pay attention to materials in the local languages and use information from Ghana to get people excited and eager to purchase books for leisure reading. I hear this speech each year….and each year, publishers prove that they are not listening (or convinced Ghanaians read for leisure) as well as they should. We also met publishers from other parts of the world, mainly India and Australia. One group IAD from Australia publish materials on the Aboriginal population by the people themselves. They voice the Aborigines, using their own languages and world view. IAD also gave us free materials; which was very nice of them. We also visited EPP which is always a pleasure. I was very glad to have found Sedco. They are now the only publishers carrying the Junior African Writers Series (JAWS). I was able to purchase some new titles from them. I am not particularly impressed with educational materials coming from India and the UK. I find them convoluted. I find too much happening on one page; too busy for even the adult. One page can include information on different topics, written in different fonts, colors with new characters. It’s frustrating for the adult to follow the fine print, imagine the child. They turn me off. Unfortunately, these were the highlights on this week long Fair. As always, (I’ve been attending this Fair since 2008), attendance was poor. So the publishers did not make money and as a result, the authors. The publishers also suffered from poor printing. Some materials had massive editorial mistakes; including pages being stuck to each and blank pages. In addition, the materials were often irrelevant at best. There was one publisher selling outdated books on countries, and only 2 African countries were represented in the stack. To top it off, the books, which were published in 1998, were being sold for $4 each! This is a country where the average person makes far less than that…and they have to pay for outdated materials on top of it! How insulting. It was clear that those books were also not published by African publishers but rather purchased to resell. My aim in attending this year’s Fair was to find a book on Ghanaian/African plants and trees. No luck! Imagine that. The Ghana NATIONAL Book Fair does not have any publishers focusing on educational materials using Ghanaian local materials. I was able to find what you would be able to find searching through a US library sale. This is not to say that there were no materials of relevance. There were some materials in Twi; mostly story books. We needed workbooks. There were no science materials exploring Ghanaian plants such as Neem and other plants, but there were materials catering to the curriculum. Not even a book on Ghanaian birds…water bodies, and vegetables. What information is being passed down? The problem with publishers in Ghana is that they don’t have any faith in a reading public. They think those who need books will have to be students; trying to pass the test or schools purchasing for their students. They don’t believe that there is a public out there interested in purchasing books to read for sheer pleasure and to enhance their knowledge; unless works of fiction or romance novels. You would be surprised how many romance novels there were on sale. Until the publishers have more faith and respect for the reading public, they will continue to face problems of poor sales and low attendance on such fairs.