{UAH} Public Libraries - Africa is gracefully disturbing

http://www.monitor.co.ug/OpEd/Editorial/Put-money-public-libraries/689360-3434436-peiuc1z/index.html

Jinja Town's public library, which was founded in 1944, is in dire state. Its roof is leaking meaning books are at risk of getting wet. It is too small to serve the more than 100 people who try to use whatever is left of it every day. It does not have money to buy newspapers every day, to pay for Internet subscription, to buy stationery and to service/maintain the computer – presumably only one!

The state of Jinja's public library can be said of the many other public libraries set up by the colonial government. These were set up in the traditional district towns like Mbale, Tororo, Gulu, Kampala, Masaka, Kabale, etc and many have not had a facelift in the 54 years Uganda has been independent!

Their physical state aside, one wonders when the libraries were last restocked with books. It is likely the books in these libraries are mostly those published in the 1960s! What this means is that users of the library cannot benefit from the new knowledge of the 1990s and 2000s. The result is that people use the libraries as simply quiet reading places, but not as places they can learn something new through shared knowledge.

The first independence government whose mantra was to fight poverty, ignorance and disease put in some efforts to maintain the libraries but subsequent governments have done almost nothing. The NRM government that has been in power longest – 30 uninterrupted years – will inevitably take most of the blame for the state of public libraries.

Yes the NRM has done many things to advance the country economically but its obsession with the prosperity gospel seen purely from the lenses of money seems to have blinded it to the importance of literacy and intellectual growth as one key pillar in helping citizens achieve prosperity.

That is perhaps the reason the same Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development is making more money available for the Youth Livelihood Fund and Saccos while at the same time cutting funding for libraries. Jinja library funding for example has reduced from a paltry Shs7.6 million in 2014-2014 financial year to Shs4.7m in 2015-2016 and now Shs3.7m this year!

This can only illustrate that the government does not see value in public libraries yet these should support the huge investment being made under the universal primary and secondary education (UPE and USE) programmes.

It is therefore important that government begins to put resources in this area as the cost of ignorance is much higher than the cost of education.

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Bwanika Nakyesawa Luwero

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