Writers task govt to promote reading as a life skill

The executive director of Femrite, an association for Uganda women writers, Ms Hilda Twongyeirwe, has asked the government to consider including reading in the syllabus for both primary and secondary schools if Uganda is to improve its reading culture.

Speaking to journalists at a three-day international literature conference at Kyambogo University in Kampala yesterday, Ms Twongyeirwe said reading should be promoted as a life skill.

“The government needs to put emphasis on reading and have it clearly articulated on the syllabus. Schools are the biggest reading spaces that we have, so they must ensure that people are reading. Reading is not only for passing exams, but a life skill,” she said.

“At a lower level, it can be studied as a subject. When I was in O-Level at Bishops Girls Secondary School Ayebe in Kabale District, I got to love literature because we had a library hour where we had to read a book and give a summary. We read three books every week,” she added.

The conference was held in recognition of the works of Mr Abdulrazak Gurnah, the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature.

According to Ms Twongyeirwe, teaching children to read early will nurture them into better readers.
“When it is done right from nursery school, it becomes a culture. When it is introduced late, you feel it is imposed on you,” she said.

Ms Twongyeirwe also called for the equipping of libraries to ease access to reading materials.
She urged writers to take their literature closer to readers to bridge the current disconnect between writers and readers.

Book market
Ms Twongyeirwe said Femrite had opened up a book market at the Uganda Museum where publishers and writers can exhibit their works.

Prof Maria G N Namusoke, the deputy Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs at Kyambogo University, urged authors and writers to think of innovative ways of marketing their works.

“Think about our bad reading culture and find a way of how the beautiful stories that you write can be read by people and we move away from a saying that when you want to hide something from an African, hide it in a book,” Prof Namusoke said.

Mr Magemeso Namungalu, the author of Namungalu Books and former news editor at Radio Uganda and Uganda Television, called for leisure reading.

“We cannot develop as a nation without a culture of reading. During our times, we were mostly taught by whites, they encouraged us to read. We could borrow books from the library and read. Schools should resurrect that kind of encouragement,” Mr Magemeso said.

The conference was organised in partnership with the Aga Khan Foundation, the Embassy of Sweden, the Ford Foundation, and Fountain Publishers, among others.