Emirati and African visions at the Sharjah African Literature Festival

Sharjah, 27 January / WAM / Participants in the session “Building Institutions that Promote Reading” within the activities of the Sharjah African Literature Festival stressed the importance of reading as an essential means to enhance cultural identity and expand the horizons of knowledge. They spoke about their inspiring experiences in establishing projects and institutions aiming to spread the culture of reading by establishing libraries. And schools in remote areas provided prison libraries that contributed to inmates obtaining advanced university degrees.

Dr. Abdul Aziz Al Muslim, Chairman of the Sharjah Heritage Institute, Kinanao Fili, co-founder of the Gaborone Book Foundation, and lawyer Ifeoma Esiri, founder of the Zakios Libraries Project in Nigeria, spoke at the session.

Dr. Abdul Aziz Al-Musallam reviewed his long journey with culture and heritage and his interests varied between books, fairy tales and poetry, highlighting the achievements of the Sharjah Heritage Institute, which includes more than 1,300 employees and four international offices.

He said that since the establishment of the Institute, with the great support of His Highness Sheikh Dr. Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi, Member of the Supreme Council and Ruler of Sharjah, we have focused on awareness of heritage and publishing. We also run the Sharjah Heritage Days Festival and the Sharjah International Storyteller Forum, which have become two influential international platforms, noting that the Institute has come under the umbrella of UNESCO, where It is an accredited center for capacity building in the field of heritage.

Nigerian lawyer Ifeoma Esiri reviewed her influential experience in establishing the Zacchios Libraries Project in 1999, where it began distributing books to schools and encouraging children to read them through interactive sessions that brought them together with authors, which contributed to strengthening their connection to the library. The project now included 34 libraries in Ligos, with more than 62,000 books distributed. Throughout Nigeria, as well as organizing entertainment trips for children to connect them with culture and reading.

Esiri also highlighted its initiative in cooperation with the National Open University to provide books in prisons, as it established 19 libraries in Nigerian prisons.

For her part, Kinanao Fili indicated that the idea of ​​the Zakios Libraries Project in Nigeria stemmed from her passion for reading and her own efforts as a non-profit organization with a focus on African literature and delivering it to government schools that face difficulties in accessing resources.

She explained that her team worked to visit schools in remote and rugged areas to reach children in communities with a population of between 500 and 1,000 people. It was not limited to annual exhibitions, but rather we organized reading nights and launched a book club that brings together reading enthusiasts to promote the culture of reading in our society.

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