IPA President Bodour Al Qasimi Stresses Opportunity in African Publishing
The IPA president has made trips to four African markets, meeting with publishing leaders on the challenge to learn from the pandemic’s lessons in rebuilding the continent’s book business.
International Publishers Association president Bodour Al Qasimi meets in Accra with Ghanaian publishers. Image: IPA
‘African Ownership, African Innovation, African Energy’
On the latest stop in her series of meetings with African publishers and associations, International Publishers Association (IPA) president Bodour Al Qasimi was in Accra to meet with publishers there and with members of the Ghanaian Publishers Association. One of her key messages in her travels is that the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic holds out a chance for African publishers to rebuild their sector for growth.
African Publishing Innovation Fund Names Five 2021 Projects
These new African Publishing Innovation Fund grants respond to the educational shortfalls in parts of Africa where the switch to digital has left students without adequate resources.
The fishing village of Butre in Ghana, the type of rural community in which girls in particularly have faced challenges in accessing online learning because of a significant urban-rural digital divide. Girls are expected to take on childcare responsibilities and household chores. Image – iStockphoto: TG23
‘Scalable Digital Learning Innovations’
In its announcement today (March 10) of its allocations of US$170,000 in 2021 funding, the African Publishing Innovation Fund has named five projects to receive grants, from an initial total of 311 applications from 26 African nations.
Strategies
On both occasions, Al Qasimi presented the IPA’s 2021 vision to develop strategies to return global publishing to full strength and enable it to continue making its vital contribution to education, social development and knowledge economies.
Addressing KPA officials and Kenyan publishers, Al Qasimi said: “The pandemic exposed some important underlying issues in the publishing world, and its impact continues to reverberate. This is why we are assembling a cross-sectoral task force comprising publishers, authors, illustrators, distributors, wholesalers, printers, and like-minded others. We will engage all stakeholders across the value chain and draw up a road map to help the book industry to be more resilient and move onwards and upwards, to everyone’s benefit.”