A 'hunger for books.' - The International African Institute in London

UNESCO Courier, August, 1990 by Peter Lloyd

A 'hunger for books'

A "hunger for books" in developing countries is one of the cultural challenges of the age and "threatens to undermine efforts to promote universal literacy, education for all and access to culture". [1]

The situation is especially serious in Africa, which "through lack of funds and chronic foreign exchange constrains is becoming a tragically bookless society". [2] While in most developing countries the number of books published per million inhabitants grew slowly from 1960 and accelerated during the 1980s, in Africa this did not happen. Although the number of titles published in Africa almost doubled between 1960 and the end of the 1970s, it fell during the 1980s.

Apart from the fact that teachers and pupils in African schools often lack basic materials, many African academics are denied access to international research in their fields. A number of university libraries have cut their subscriptions to periodicals to a fifth of the level of the 1970s. New books cannot be purchased and are often unknown in the area to which they refer. Many local journals established in the 1960s and 1970s are no longer being published. African scholars are being increasingly marginalized. "A generation of students is now being taught by lectures who are unable to gain access to current research and scholarship." [2]

Alleviating Africa's book famine is one of the major concerns of the International African Institute (IAI), an international non-governmental organization with consultative status at Unesco and UNICEF. The Institute seeks to publicize the results of research by African scholars both within and beyond the continent and facilitate their access to the work of Africanists in the rest of the world. It publishes directories, bibliographies, monographs on ethnology, history, sociology and linguistics.

The London-based IAI (formerly the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures) was founded in 1926 as a centre of information on African ethnology, linguistics and social sciences, to organize research in these fields and to present its results in a useful form.

The Institute is financed by members' dues and donations from governments and non-governmental bodies. It also receives research grants from African and European governments, foundations and Unesco. Members, both individual and corporate (universities, museums, libraries, bookshops, seminaries, governments and institutes) are drawn from some ninety countries.

The most prominent of the Institute's publications is the quarterly Africa, now in its sixtieth year and still one of the leading journals on African affairs and culture. It brings an inter-disciplinary approach to the social effects of development. Many of its contributors are African scholars, and even greater participation is being sought from them. The journal's policy is to give increased coverage to African publications in its book reviews and articles.

The Institute tries to make its publications available at moderate cost throughout Africa. By organizing seminars, workshops and other projects, inviting donations and contributing to co-operation between publishers, it is attempting to break the vicious circle in which many African scholars are trapped.

[1] Third Medium-Term Plan (1990-1995), Unesco, 1990.

[2] The African Book World and Press: A Directory, Hans M. Zell Publishers, London, 4th edition 1988.