The Tenth Eritrean Book Fair

The Book Fair has become an important cultural institution in Eritrea with special focus on children and youths. The main purpose of the Eritrean Book Fair is to cultivate a vibrant reading culture in Eritrea and to contribute towards building a national publishing industry. Therefore, it has served as a forum to raise the awareness of the people on the importance of reading through different programs disseminated by the mass media. This year’s main topic war “School Libraries. Foundation to Reading Culture”. The Book Fair had over 65.000 visitors according to the organizers.
As a part of the Book Fair a separate workshop was conducted. Professor Helge Rønning from the University of Oslo and Mr. Odd Magnus Ulvestad Nielsen from the Norwegian Publishers Association were invited by the Eritrean Publishers Association for this event. They held lectures on the role of reading and the book culture in relation to social development as well as an introduction to the Norwegian publishing industry.
Almost 30 students from the Norwegian friendship communities of Stavanger and Trondheim visited Eritrea the same week as the book fair was conducted and carried out activities together with their Eritrean friendship communities of Keren and Asmara.  The students were as well invited to the workshop at the book fair to give an orientation of their own experiences with school libraries.