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Publishing in Uganda with notes from Africa:
Publishing in Uganda
with notes from Africa:
A Review
Ikoja-Odongo, J.R, PhD.
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About the Author
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NABOTU
P O Box 25412
KAMPALA, Uganda
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Table of contents
Table of contents ............................................................................................................. 4
2.1 Uganda: Country prole .................................................................................... 7
2.2 Education policies and their relationship to publishing ............................ 9
3.0 Language Policy ...................................................................................................... 15
4.0 The Concept of Publishing ................................................................................... 16
4.1 History of Books and Book Publishing in Uganda .................................... 16
4.2 The East African Literature Bureau ............................................................... 22
4.3 Local Churches .................................................................................................. 23
4.4 Ugandas newspaper history ........................................................................... 24
4.5 Post independence Book Publishing in Uganda ........................................ 25
4.6 The Structure of the Industry ......................................................................... 26
4.6.1 Public Sector Publishing .......................................................................... 26
Government Printer .......................................................................................... 26
Uganda Literature Bureau ............................................................................... 27
Lands and Survey Department ............................................................................. 27
4.7 The Private Sector ............................................................................................. 27
4.8 Foreign Companies ........................................................................................... 28
4.9 Publishing trends in Uganda since 1989 ...................................................... 30
4.10 Co-publishing .................................................................................................. 32
4.11 Rise of Informal Publishing ......................................................................... 32
4.12 Scholarly Publishing ...................................................................................... 33
4.13 Electronic Publishing ..................................................................................... 36
4.14 Role of Government in publishing ............................................................. 37
5.0 Representations ....................................................................................................... 40
5.1 National Book Trust of Uganda ..................................................................... 40
5.2 Book Development Council ............................................................................ 40
6.0 Publishing Opportunities ..................................................................................... 41
6.1 Economic Opportunities .................................................................................. 41
6.3 Cultural Opportunities .................................................................................... 42
6.4 Challenges to publishing in Uganda ............................................................ 42
7.1 Printing as a process and as an industry ............................................................ 45
7.2 Nature and size of printing industry in Uganda ........................................ 45
7.3 Binding ................................................................................................................ 48
7.4 Production Capacity ......................................................................................... 48
7.5 Printing and Ancillary Industry ..................................................................... 49
7.6 Printers and Publishers .................................................................................... 49
8.0 Book Procurement and Distribution in Uganda ............................................... 51
8.1 Centralised Procurement and Distribution ................................................. 55
8.2 Decentralised Procurement and Distribution ............................................. 56
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8.2.1 Decentralised Instructional Materials Procurement Pilot Project (DIMPPP) 57
8.2.2 Players in the decentralised procurement system ................................... 57
8.2.3 Challenges to the Decentralised Procurement System ........................... 58
8.2.4 Role of Districts in Procurement ................................................................. 59
9.0 Copyright Law in Uganda ..................................................................................... 61
9.1 Introduction ......................................................................................................... 61
9.2 Purpose of Copyright ........................................................................................ 62
9.3 Uganda Copyright Law ..................................................................................... 63
9.4 Copyright law and publishers ......................................................................... 66
9.5 Publishing, Copyright and Licensing in the Internet Era. ......................... 66
9.6 Copyright law and information users ............................................................ 69
10. Publishing in Africa: Past and Present ............................................................... 70
10.1 An Historical Perspective ................................................................................ 70
10.2 Secondary Textbook Authorship and Publishing ...................................... 73
10.3 Text Book policies in Africa ........................................................................... 74
10.4 Languages and publishing in Africa ............................................................ 75
10.5 Copyright Environment in Africa ................................................................. 75
10.6 Scholarly publishing in Africa ....................................................................... 77
10.61 Situation Analysis ...................................................................................... 79
10.6.1 Case for e-scholarly publishing .............................................................. 82
10.7 Training in Publishing in Africa ................................................................... 84
10.8 Where to go from here? ................................................................................... 85
References ....................................................................................................................... 88
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1.0 Introduction
This review is about publishing in Uganda and more especially about publishing of
educational materials. It is meant to highlight the history, nature, scope, challenges and
opportunities of publishing in the country. It is more inclined to identifying the gaps in
the provision of educational materials. This arises from the fact that publishing in Uganda
like in many other African countries has been bedevilled with many problems and up to
the present times, Uganda cannot claim of having a robust publishing sector capable of
satisfying all the book and other reading materials requirements. But it is noted that the
countrys publishing industry is growing rapidly especially in the primary school textbook
sub sector.
To understand, the nature of publishing in Uganda, information of the education policy,
language, the printing industry, marketing and distribution of educational materials and
Uganda copyright law are reviewed. All these are necessary to arrive at some idea about the
direction of the future of the countrys publishing industry. It is the picture that is needed to
allow thinking about alternative models of publishing. The picture that comes out can assist
the PALM AFRICA project, a project that is searching for alternative publishing models or
methodologies in publishing justify and look for newer or additional models of publishing
as a means of broadening access to educational or other information materials. And even
without that picture, publishing in the traditional way has been on for so long that it is about
time newer ways of publishing come on stage.
Additional review is done about publishing in Africa. The intention is to provide additional
insights into publishing in Africa. It covers secondary school authorship, book policies in
Africa, and copyright environment in Africa.
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2.1 Uganda: Country prole
Uganda is a landlocked country along the Equator, which is bordered by Sudan to the North,
Kenya to the East, DRC to the West, Tanzania and Rwanda to the South and Southwest
respectively. The land area is about 241,139 square kilometres, 17% of which is water.
Currently the population is estimated to be approximately 27.4 millions. Uganda is a
developing country. It is one of the poorest and highly indebted countries of the world. Book
buying is low except in specic areas like religious and schoolbooks. The current National
Literacy rate is estimated at 68% of which 76% is for males and 61% is for females. The
population age group 6-12 is estimated at 22%, which is about 53% of the total population.
At primary school level, less than 71.1% of the children aged 6-15 years are enrolled in
schools. Of these, 83% are females and 84% are males. At secondary level, 43% of the age
group 15 years and above are enrolled in schools (MoE&S, 2005).
Out of fty-six local languages that are spoken; only about ten (10) are published. Public
libraries are few, small and poorly funded. There is one public library for every one million
people on the average and the book per capita is below 1%. Academic libraries are as poor
because they are seriously under funded or not funded at all in some cases. Rosenberg
(1997), and Aiyepeku, and Komolafe (1998) tell woes of these libraries in most of Africa. The
recent World Bank (2008) study lists problems of Uganda libraries as follows:
Inadequate funding, with little or no support from government and only occasional
donor support.
Lack of adequate library rooms, which are usually, converted classrooms with
insufcient space, shelving, furniture and equipment, or security.
Lack of nance to undertake regular library maintenance
Where stock exists it is generally old and often irrelevant to current curricula and
teacher/student interests.
Heavy stock wear and tear, loss and damage caused by poor management, lack of
security, pest and fungal damage, theft and so forth.
Lack of understanding by both teachers and students of the role and function of a
school library, and there is a growing inability to use libraries properly even when
they are well-established.
Lack of trained school librarians and poor training and overloading of teacher
librarians.
A widespread lack of basic minimum standards for school library provision that can
guide schools.
A lack of commitment from either Ministries of Education or individual schools to
the development and use of school libraries.
The absence of clearly articulated school library policies in a majority of countries,
and
Poor library management systems (World Bank, 2008:71-72).
Research libraries suffer the same fate as other libraries. There are no libraries in most
schools and where they exist, they are in name only. Bookshops are few and number about
two hundred and fty. Bookselling is gradually increasing and improving in urban areas.
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Bookshops are not well stocked outside the capital city and few major towns. In general,
school and home environment in particular have limited inuence in developing reading
habits.
School curriculum is too packed to leave any time for reading especially at primary and
secondary school level. Urban inuence due to radio, television, cinema and theatre lure
students away from reading development. There are over 130 operational FM community
radio stations and over ten T.V stations and many theatres which are easier forms of leisure
that distract potential readers from reading. Rural Uganda accounts for about 80% of the
entire population and reading facilities are scarce in such locations. Occupational activities
like tethering goats and looking after cows take free time for boys while girls do domestic
work. All these affect the need for publishing products to a greater extent.
Education is the greatest asset to publishing. This is because its products are the resources
in the advancement of education, and knowledge. The education sector in Uganda is
structured into pre-primary education, primary education, post primary education, and
higher education. The guiding principles of education provision is ensuring; Access, Equity,
Relevance, Quality and Affordability. The mission of the Education Sector is to provide
for, support, guide, coordinate, regulate and promote quality education and sports for all
persons in Uganda for national integration, individual and national development. (MoE&S,
2005).
Enrollment at primary school level over the years is shown in the following table.
Table 1: Growth in the Primary Enrolment 1996-2004 as a consequence of UPE
Year 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004
Male enrolments in all
primary schools
1,647,742 2,832,472 3,061,722 3,301,888 3,395,554 3,528,035 3,721,135 3,872,589 3,721,911
Female enrolments in all
primary schools
1,420,883 2,471,092 2,744,663 2,986,351 3,163,459 3,372,881 3,633,018 3,760,725 3,632,838
Total enrolment in all primary
schools
3,068,625 5,303,564 5,806,385 6,288,239 6,559,013 6,900,916 7,354,153 7,633,314 7,354,749
Primary Schools 8,531 8,600 9,916 10,597 11,578 13,219 13,332 13,353 13,239
Number of teachers 81564 89247 99237 109733 110366 127038 139484 145587 145,819
Number of classrooms 25,676 25427 28380 43174 50,370 60,199 69,900 73,104 79,132
Core textbooks procured 783,556 2,112,104 1,492,186 1,331,710 1,171,235 2,086,132 3,426,000 3,467,266 2,828,324
Teachers guides procured 236,816 485,195 549,150 593,480 637,811 673,533 686,297 118,123 254904
Source: EPD, Annual School Census (2004)
The above Table gives an idea on how primary education has been expanding over the years.
It also shows the status of the numbers of books and other reading materials as procured
annually.
There are about 7.4 millions children annually in primary schools since 2001. These numbers
may continue showing upwards trend since government has opened Universal Secondary
Education (USE). Government supplies books using a decentralised system through local
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bookshops. There were 697,507 students in secondary (UBOS, 2005) and teacher training. But
with the introduction of USE in 2006, the number of students in secondary schools is likely to
triple thus raising the book requirements for the country. Government occasionally provides
schools with books but in most cases students buy their own textbooks - something that is
a must in joining secondary schools. There are less than one hundred thousand students in
tertiary institutions including universities. Most of these institutions get their books through
donations, and purchases from fees levied to students for library development.
Government introduced different policies that support publishing. These are the Universal
Primary Education (UPE) that has increased enrolment in primary schools since 1997;
Functional Adult Literary (FAL) Programme in the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social
Development aimed at making adults become literate and the Universal Secondary Education
(USE) that has also created an increase of students in secondary schools since 2007.
The 1995 National Constitution of Uganda in Article 29 guarantees freedom of speech and
expression. Liberalization of economy policy has eased the importation of printing inputs.
Enabling political environment and freedom of expression have to a large extent created a
demand for publishing products. The taxation policy permits importation of educational
materials and computers and accessories tax free. Most local publishers print their materials
abroad and hence enjoy the tax incentive on bringing in books or other reading materials
to Uganda. Despite that respite Ugandan books are still more expensive than those in the
neighbouring countries.
2.2 Education policies and their relationship to publishing
Policy relating to education in Uganda is found in the Government White Paper on Education
entitled Education for National Integration and Development of 1992. This paper deals with
all aspects of education and these are supported by other policies of government. The key
policy thrusts of government in the education Sector are:
i. Providing equitable access to quality and affordable education to all Uganda
ii. Propelling Uganda towards achieving PEAP
iii. Meeting commitments to achieve Education for All (EFA) and the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs)
iv. Providing relevant education
v. Enhancing efciency
vi. Strengthening partnership (MoE&S, 2005).
Government has dened national aims and objectives for pre-primary education which
hitherto did not exist. The policy aims and objectives of pre-primary education are: to
develop capabilities and healthy physical growth of the child; to help the child develop
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good social habits as an individual and as a member of society; to develop moral values
in the child; to enrich the childs experience by developing imagination, self reliance and
thinking power; to help the children appreciate their cultural background and customs
and developing a feeling of love and care for other people and for Uganda and a sense of
unity leading to a national stance and to develop language and communication skills in the
mother tongue. To implement these policy statements, government adopts among others a
position of providing curricular guidelines to be followed by pre-primary schools. Pupils
spend three years in pre-primary schools. Book provision for this level of schooling is a
private affair, that is, each pre-school asks parents to provide reading materials for their
children and teachers draw lesson sheets for every day work.
At primary school level, government states the aims and objectives to be in line with the
language policy of improving functional literacy, numeracy and skills in communication,
oral expression, reading and writing in Kiswahili, English and the local language; basic
computation skills, including skills in addition, subtraction, multiplication and division,
physical development and inculcation of progressive and balanced emotional control
through games, sports, hobbies and good health habits and prerequisites for continuing
education and development. The primary cycle is currently seven years of schooling. An
interesting element at this level of education is the introduction of vocational education on
the school curricula. It is entirely government responsibility to supply instructional materials
to its primary schools. Private primary schools fend for themselves. This brings in unequal
access to educational materials.
The aims and objectives of secondary education that takes four to six years is to instil and
promote national unity, an understanding of the social and civic responsibilities, strong love
and care for others and respect for public property as well as an appreciation of international
relations and benecial international co-operation; imparting and promoting a sense of self-
discipline, ethical and spiritual values, personal and collective responsibility and instilling
positive attitudes towards productive work and strong respect for the dignity of labour and
those who engage in productive labour activities among many others. All these aspirations
are reected in the new curricula designed by the National Curriculum Development Centre.
In terms of access to educational resources, government sends grants to schools to cater
for educational needs including books but because of the explosion of school populations,
this is not enough. Consequently schools demand of students to contribute at least two
textbooks for their libraries including prescribed textbooks students bring for their own
reading. Private secondary schools are not catered for in this arrangement. Instead they
buy books out of the fees students pay if at all. Even using this avenue, books are scarce
in secondary schools especially in rural areas and this could explain one of the reasons for
poor performance in many of the private secondary schools.
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Government espouses that technical and vocational education has a role to stimulate
intellectual and technical growth of students in order to make them productive members
of the community; and to produce craftsmen/women, technicians and other skilled human
resource to meet the demands of industry, agriculture and commerce as well as the teaching
of technical and vocational subjects. Institutions in this category are the Business, Technical,
Vocational Education and Training Colleges. Government maintains a number of such
colleges and sends grants to these institutions to cater for instructional materials. However
money is not always enough. Libraries are poorly resourced. Internet access is a dream.
Textbook learning is common. Donations play a big role in most cases. This also leads to
inadequate access to learning materials and directly affects their performance and eventually
their competence in the world of work.
Government recognises the importance attached to teacher education and therefore to the
quality of its teachers. It endorses that the aims and objectives of teacher education are the
broadening and deepening of the trainees own academic knowledge of teaching subjects as
well as their understanding of the development stages and needs of the child; production
of competent, reliable, honest and responsible teachers. Tying this to access to instructional
materials especially books, the same pattern is seen; grants are sent to colleges and colleges
are advised to use them wisely including purchase of books and other instructional
materials. But it is an experience that books are very expensive items that only a handful
may be purchased actually. Bookshops hardly hold books for specialised users like teachers
or technicians. Poverty, an all round problem affects procurement or buying by individuals
and institutions. This leaves donations to take a leading part. And that apart, donations
have the problem of lack of relevance sometimes. For this project this justies a position to
look for alternative means of providing learning materials.
Finally government recognizes the role of higher education as being teaching to produce high-
level manpower; research, particularly applied; publication of books, journals and research
papers; public service through a variety of extension activities; and serving as store-house
of knowledge and centres of excellence in all elds of knowledge. And consequently directs
that tertiary institutions in Uganda should pursue the following goals: training high-level
technical, managerial and professional personnel for all sectors of national life; generating
advanced knowledge and innovations through research and to be able to translate or adapt
them to local and Ugandan situations; intensifying the provision of public services through
expanded extra-mural or extension work and consultancy services; developing intellectual
capacities of students to understand their local and national environment objectively and
appreciate to develop them; promoting the development of an indigenous scientic and
technological capacity needed for tackling the problems of development; equipping the
students with knowledge, skills and attitudes to enable them to join the world of work as
useful members of their communities and the nation at large. Higher education includes
colleges of higher learning and universities.
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For the purpose of this study, government provides grants to institutions to cater for book
banks and other instructional materials. Again these amounts are not always sufcient. Also
bookshops do not exist in almost all educational institutions and where they exist; there
are no student allowances to buy the required books. Poverty is a big handicap to book
buying. And books are expensive to be afforded by an ordinary school going person. It is
only in some universities that reliance on e-resources that some relief has come from. But
of course e-resources are not always available in each of the subjects or topics taught. ICT
infrastructure is also not enough to allow fulltime searches whenever required. Coupled
with the ICT are the prohibitive costs of connectivity. Bandwidth problem is a handicap
since institutions operate on small budgets. To mitigate the problem some institutions like
Makerere University have learnt the hard way to seek for Open Source Support for full texts
of books and journals and also seek assistance from donor agencies for money to pay for the
bandwidth.
Government provides Non-formal education for children out of school especially those
in difcult environment for various reasons such as social, economic, and environmental.
These children include the over age, children in pastoral areas, and shing villages and
others. Some of the initiatives in which education is delivered using alternative models
include: Alternative Basic Education for Karamoja (ABEK), Complementary Opportunities
for Primary Education (COPE), Basic Education for Urban Poverty Areas (BEUPA), Child-
centred Alternative Non-formal Community Based Education (CHANCE), Empowering
Lifelong Skills Education in Masindi (ELSE). All these efforts are because government
notes the need for non-formal and adult education as a means to attain permanent and
developmental literacy and numeracy, acquisition of functional skills relevant to life in the
community; development of national awareness of individuals and continued learning
while at work.
Eradication of illiteracy and development of post literacy and permanent functional literacy
and livelihood skills are the prime aims at this level. Supply of learning materials to this
level is the responsibility of the Ministry of Gender Labour and Social Development. This
ministry writes its own manuals, edits them and gets them printed. The department of
Community Development takes these materials on their routine eld work and distributes
them and other packs to learners for free. So far the Ministry has produced literacy materials
in six languages and these include Luganda, Luo, Lunyankole, Lukiga, Lunyoro, Lutoro, Ateso
and Lukonjo. The literacy materials include; Primers, Instructors Guides to the primer, and
charts. Some post-literacy materials have also been produced. From the point of materials
supply, language plays a signicant factor.
Some Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) have also been active in the eld of
Functional Literacy programmes. These NGOs include: Action-Aid, National Adult
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Education Association of Uganda, Uganda Community Association for Child Welfare,
Uganda Joint Action for Adult Education, Religious bodies etc.
Although the White Paper on Education is clear about what the nation needs from the
education sector, it does not fully address the issue of learning materials at all levels. And
although it sends grants to institutions the amounts are never enough to see any improvement
in collection development. Libraries of such institutions are poor by any standard. Often
donations received are not in line with interests of particular institutions, they are merely
dumping grounds. ICT diffusion is very low and connectivity problems compound the
problem even further. But there are efforts to introduce ICT in primary schools, secondary
schools and obviously in tertiary institutions where diffusion of ICT is ever increasing. For
instance SchoolNet Uganda is helping to enhance the teaching and learning process using ICT
through the provision of affordable computers, ICT for education advice and sensitization,
technical capacity building and support, teacher pedagogical professional development and
support, local education content development, school networking and school international
linkages for project based learning. SchoolNet was started in 1997 as a programme jointly
supported by World Links for Development (WorLD) currently World Links Organization
(http://www.world-links.org), World bank Institute- ICT for Education Programme and
Ministry of Education and Sports Uganda. SchoolNet is a not for prot Non Governmental
Organization which works with Uganda Education Institutions in setting up ICT facilities
and developing technical and pedagogical capacity necessary to use ICT to enhance teaching
and learning. This is just one of the examples of such projects but the Ministry of Education
and Sports is committed to ensuring that secondary schools are connected to the Internet as
part of its policy framework. By this the implication is that alternative methods of publishing
can be adopted to increase access to educational information. The issue to address is the
publishers fear and dilemma to release Copyright without losing income. This needs to be
explored.
Private institutions of learning at all level are nding difculties to sustain their learning
requirements due to insufcient funds. The preference is for these institutions to develop
textbook centres and call them libraries. The bottom line however is that access to educational
materials in Uganda is hard, uneven and in some places or situations out rightly poor. This
creates a need for newer ways of thinking and action. The argument is that at all levels
of education, instructional and learning materials are needed in large numbers. These are
made available to various institutions using different models. For example for pre-primary
schools or crches, parents pay for the instructional materials. In primary level, government
pays for materials and compiles lists of approved books and other instructional materials
and takes it to schools. It is schools role to select what they want and go to buy them from
bookshops in their areas. Whether they do so efciently and effectively is another matter.
Whether they are enough or not is yet another matter. In secondary schools up to the teacher
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training colleges, students pay library fees as well as buying books for themselves based
on list given by a particular school. Colleges and university students pay library fees too.
The money collected is used to buy books and paying for Internet services. It must also be
stated here that tertiary institutions are poorly funded and getting journals online looks a
distant dream. For universities, the general policy appears to be that part of the students
fees is automatically allocated by management to buy books or subscribe to journals, mainly
online. These inadequacies therefore provide the basis for creative thinking towards much
easier and inclusive frameworks or models and PALM project is one such initiative.
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3.0 Language Policy
Uganda language policy is undecided. Government recognizes that the diversity of local
languages in Uganda makes it difcult for the country to achieve rapid universal and
democratized education, literacy for all, intellectualisation of all the people as well as the
attainment of the much needed national unity. This is because of the conicting aims and
prejudices resulting from decient views and outlooks of life as well as narrow and selsh
interest, that have made it difcult for the country to develop a common language for
Uganda. There are 56 languages recognized in the national Constitution of the Republic
Uganda of 1995. This diversity has been one of the most inuential causes of social conicts
in the country. But at the same time government endorses the view that African languages
should be developed as national media of communication and as much as possible, also as
the media for instruction, for pedagogic and cultural reasons and benets. Government, is
strongly convinced that in order to develop a genuinely rich national culture and achieve
national unity and rapid development, Ugandas language policy in education must be
centred around the emphatic and deliberate development of a national and educational
language policy that can contribute to the development of greater patriotism, nationalism
and pan Africanism among citizens, leading to the achievement of increased and benecial
communication and cooperation among the various ethnic groups in the country and beyond
Ugandas borders. Consequently Government for now and in the absence of a national
language accepts the position that the mother tongue is used as a medium of instruction
in all educational programmes; English will be taught as a subject from primary one. From
primary ve onwards, English becomes the medium of instruction. In rural areas the
medium of instruction from primary one to four is the relevant local community languages.
In urban areas the medium of instruction is English throughout the primary cycle. Kiswahili
and English would be taught as compulsory subjects to all children throughout the primary
school cycle, both in rural and urban areas but Kiswahili appears to lag behind because
of lack of teachers procient in the language and learning materials. Arising out of this
policy position, it is expected that in future, writing and publishing in local languages may
improve. To develop the Ugandan languages government is intent to establish a national
Advisory Board on Languages.
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4.0 The Concept of Publishing
Many people nd it difcult to distinguish between publishing and printing. It is the reason
it is explained here. Publishing is not printing or the other way round. Printing is only one
aspect of publishing. Publishing is the process of creating an information product from
an idea developed into a manuscript, getting the manuscript processed, manufactured or
printed and announcing the product in the market. Printing is only multiplying or producing
the number of copies of the product.
The Concise Oxford Dictionary denition of the word publish is to make generally known,
to noise abroad. Publishing is the present tense of it which has come to be associated
with the written word. It is therefore dened as the act of making known to the public any
literary product such as books, journals, magazines, newspapers and musical scores. It is a
means of facilitating communication of information. The term derives from a Latin word
publicare - which means making public what a publishing house has made for sale or for free
distribution. It is the process of preparing, manufacturing, and distributing books, magazines,
newspapers, lms computer programmes, records, periodicals, discs, bulletins and other
literary materials in printed or electronic form. The process begins with the selection of the
manuscripts and this is followed by the preparation or processing of manuscripts and lastly
distribution of printed materials. Processing are the activities like manuscript evaluation or
vetting, editing, copy editing, typesetting, design and layout and printing. According to the
Wikipedia Dictionary publishing refers to the production and dissemination of literature and
information. This entails the making available of information for public use.
Until the advent of digital information systems and the Internet, publishing was generally
dened as producing reading materials that are demanded by the users and written in
view of there needs. Today publishing involves Electronic publishing that has the benet of
audio publishing and visuals to complement print and other forms such as telecasting and
broadcasting. Looked at it another way, publishing is a vocation or the commercial business
of bringing the printed word or electronic information product to the marketplace in the
form of books, magazines, and newspapers and other information products. The vocational
aspect of it is that it is learnt at college or tertiary institution as a profession as well as learnt
from the publishing house in-house. In all, publishing is a social responsibility to record
human activity for posterity, provide entertainment and to inform.
4.1 History of Books and Book Publishing in Uganda
The history of books and book publishing in Uganda begins with the history of its education
and literacy. It is documented that Arab traders were the rst foreigners to come to Uganda.
Their purpose was dual trade and religion. Through their teaching of the Koran, literacy
slowly emerged but Arabs didnt do much to introduce publishing as such. Instead it is the
17
European explorers and Christian missionaries that came in to ll the void and introduced
religion and books.
From the 1860s onwards many explorers came to various parts of Africa, of whom Captain
J H Speke and H M Stanley are the relevant examples for Uganda. They came with their
Bibles and on their return, left them behind with the people they had inuenced. Speke came
in 1862 in a journey to discover for their people the source of the River Nile and travelled
westward to the Kingdom of Bunyoro where he met the Bunyoro leader, Omukama, whom
he presented a Bible, the rival to the Koran, which Arabs had given him earlier. In 1875, H
M Stanley arrived and found that Uganda presented a striking contrast to the surrounding
areas they had passed, in that it was where its rulers exacted the most merciless punishment
of pain and even death. With this impression Stanley successfully requested the Christian
Missionary Society (CMS) in London, to send missionaries to Uganda in what Fieldhouse
called the civilizing mission. The volunteers among others included Alexander Mackay, the
missionary printer.
While in Uganda Stanley gave regular Bible lessons to King Mutesa I. In many of such
lessons he quoted heavily from the Christian Scriptures as direct antithesis of the Koranic
teaching. On his departure in 1876, he appointed Dallington Scorpion Maftaa, a young
ex-slave from the coast as his successor. His teachings were well received and the young
Baganda pages or slaves were quick to take the advantages of mission teaching.
The White Fathers, the Presbyterians and Catholic Missionaries also found Buganda
a promising ground. To gain access to the Kings dominion, they sought his support.
Litchelds words are perhaps more appropriate when he said: Mutesa (The King) is
now taking the question of education in earnest, and is ordering his chiefs, Batongole (ofcials), pages
and soldiers to learn the alphabet etc. in English characters, Mackay and myself are never free from
learners some of whom are waiting with the daylight. We have our hands full to supply them with
brain food, and the small printing press sent with us from England is in daily requisition.
By 1879, the learners had completed their rst Luganda Catechism. The rst grammar book
followed in 1884 and this proved useful for the advancement of education. During the
same period, Mackay was printing simple letters of alphabet and religious tracts to provide
reading material for the Protestants. The followers became readers with baptism as a test of
literacy as well as a sign of religious sincerity. The close link between education and religion,
originating in indigenous education, and so basic in Islamic teaching, thus continued in the
missions forms of western learning.
Missionaries followed explorers in their adventure into Uganda. Missionaries came to spread
Christianity, and to succeed people had rst to be made literate. This was essential if proper
reading, interpretations and understanding of religious teaching were to be meaningful.
And once they were fairly literate, the problem of suitable reading materials came up. There
were no books available locally, so the solution was the translation of European texts into
local languages. Quite expectedly, another problem emerged, and that is the inability of
18
the missionaries to translate their texts into the native languages. On the other hand, there
were not many competent converts to help in the task. To get over this two-dimensional
problem, the missionaries had to learn the vernacular languages through some of their most
brilliant converts Henry Duta and Mackay Sembera.
While teaching the missionaries, the convert teachers were also busy learning and polishing
up their newly acquired foreign languages so that they could work closely with the
missionaries. And missionaries having learnt the vernacular language Luganda, took to
the work of translation and it became the duty of every member of the mission team to do
so. This was crucial in the speedy preparation of the much-needed basic texts necessary for
Christian teaching.
This ability of the missionaries to translate texts so quickly impressed Duta. He singled out
Pilkingtons abilities as a translator in the following words:
He, Pilkington, could translate any book into Luganda without my help and I was
not afraid of him making mistakes.
Tracking down the translations and writings of missionaries would give sound
evidence of their literary activities in Uganda. Citing two of them is sufcient for this
purpose: A.M. Mackay and G.L. Pilkington.
Mackay was a Missionary printer; whom in 1876 Frederick Ulmer of London supported
with an Albion Hand proong Press as part of the CMS equipment for the pioneer work
in Uganda. It is Mackay who introduced the rst printing press on which the early reading
materials and the Biscuit Bible were printed. This press was located at Natete near
Kampala. In 1884, he assembled the Press from which he printed his translated versions
of St. Matthews Gospel (1887) and St. Johns Gospel (1892). These translations were the rst
books in a Ugandan language. On this same Press were printed several reading charts,
alphabets and the rst postage stamps issued in Uganda.
The success of Pilkington as a translator was based on his interest in achieving success
in a Christian Mission abroad. Recorded evidence shows that he did a lot of translations
although he wrote a few other original texts in Luganda. The list of his translations is
as follows: The Acts. The Romans, The Revelations, Galatians to Colossians, Thessalonians to
Philemon, all of which were produced in 1892. In 1894, he translated Genesis, Psalms, Daniel
and in 1895, the New Testament and in 1896, the Pentateuch and The Bible which comprised
both Old and New Testament.
Both Duta and Pilkington were responsible for the translation of the Bible into Luganda.
This Bible assumed the name of the Biscuit Bible because it tted very well into the old
fashioned biscuit tin that was used to protect it from white ants. A copy of this Bible is
preserved at the Uganda Museum, Kampala.
Mukasa Ham was another brilliant covert who independently wrote a Luganda Commentary
19
on St. Lukes Gospel (1899) and an Account of a visit to England, with Sir Apolo Kagwa in 1902.
Apolo Kagwa himself wrote a short History of the Kings of Buganda and Proverbs of the
Baganda. Both of Kagwas books were produced from a small printing press that the British
Government presented to him when in Britain.
Mukasas successful translation and production of St. Lukes Commentary was received
with mixed feelings. Africans saw Mukasa as a genius. The missionaries were divided in
opinion; one school of thought hailed him as a proof of the success of their work, and the
other school saw him as a beginning of the generation of African Christians who would
eventually take over from them, thus making them redundant.
Although missionaries were able to translate texts into Luganda, there appeared divergences
and inconsistencies on the exible use of the native language. The main issue was not
the translated texts but the correct versions of the translations. Inevitably there was need
to standardize the orthography of Luganda and to achieve this, a Luganda Translation
Committee was proposed in 1897 and its members nominated in 1899. Pilkington was
charged with the task of working out its terms of reference. The terms were:
To consider translations before they were printed and to make specic efforts with regard
to:
i) The production of new books, by encouraging members of the mission to
undertake them and by looking out for the likely helpers.
ii) Promptness in getting manuscripts through the Translation Committee and
studying how this end can be best attained.
iii) Making notes of error and misprints as well as notes of points suggested in the
class and other ways, and sending them in from time to time to the secretary.
iv) Studying how words, group of words and difcult passages can be made more
idiomatic and accurate than at present.
v) Studying what broad principles of style can be improved and how to implement
those improvements.
All the changes that the Committee introduced were incorporated in the translation of the
Bible and the books that were published later.
Until this time, both Christian and educational literature was distributed free, but as
demand for educational materials increased, missionaries began selling some types of
publication at low cost. This move never deterred the demand and as a result, all literature
was commercialized and the missionaries sought new ways of producing more relevant
literature for Africans. To this end a body responsible for organizing and coordinating all
activities regarding book production was formed. This was The International Committee on
Christian Literature for Africa (ICCLA). Margaret Wrong was appointed as its rst secretary
a post she held until her death in Uganda in 1948.
20
ICCLA held a Conference in London in 1926. Prominent linguists and ethnographers
attended it. This was followed by another conference in Belgium attended by over 200
missionaries. The theme of these conferences was cooperative effort in educational work
in Africa. It was decided that publishing a quarterly bulletin would help to disseminate
information on ICCLAs activities. Hence in 1931 a quarterly called Books for Africans was
started. This publication aimed to disseminate information regarding Christian literature
both in English and vernacular languages. Almost immediately another bulletin called
Listen was published. It was devoted to women and childrens literature.
Another outcome of the conferences was the formation of the International Institute of
African Languages and Culture (IIALC). The objectives of IIALC were twofold to act as
a coordinating agency, central bureau and a clearing house for information; and to take a
lead or to assist in anthropological and linguistic investigation, with the aim of relating the
results of research to the actual life of African people. In doing this, the Institute would
utilize the experience and expertise of its experts and its journal, African would be the
channel of dissemination of information and stimulating inquiry. The Institute addressed
itself to the preparation of a practical orthography for the Africana languages guided by the
size of population speaking a particular language, and the possibilities of innite use of a
particular language in the educational system.
In their study of textbooks for African schools, the preliminary memorandum by its Executive
Committee admitted that textbooks used in African schools were mostly unsatisfactory.
They were neither adapted to African needs nor the requirements of modern education.
Therefore the systematic production of practical scripts was to be aimed at, so that useful,
relevant school books in simple readable languages would be produced. For scientic books,
however, the Institute conceded that they could still be produced in European languages.
The cumulative results of these efforts saw many books being written and published.
Notable among them were The Teachers Guides for teachers in rural areas and the African
Home Library Service.
In 1942, Margaret Wrong submitted a proposal to ICCLA on the scheme for territorial
surveys on reading materials for spreading Adult Education. In that proposal she suggested
a compilation of lists of all types of existing literature in African languages. The ultimate
purpose was to collect and synthesize all information which could provide a correct approach
to the preparation of useful books. This approach was also to bring into light the magnitude
of the problem so that trained people in publishing could be engaged.
Meanwhile, as the missionaries intensied their activities in the promotion of mass education
and literacy, the British Government equally advocated for the simultaneous advance
21
in education. In a report issued by the Colonial Ofce in 1943, the British Government
emphasized the reasons for this move as a way of preparing people for a better standards
of living, and attainment of universal literacy essential for a state aspiring for self-
government.
The foregoing account briey shows the role missionaries played in creating a base for
book publishing. Because they spearheaded translation services, research in African
orthography, and taught Africans methods of book production, they created a demand for
books which they could not satisfy but had to look for support in Europe. This is how the
British publishers found their way to the Uganda book market.
Missionaries could not cope with the demand for literature. There was no indigenous
publishing. The British publishers came in to ll the gap. By the building of the educational
system in the countries concerned, Britain was responsible for creating the infrastructure
which the book trade needed; therefore a proper appreciation of the role of British publishers
can be gained in the context of the growth of African education.
Historically, the extension of the British publishers, and trade to Uganda, as elsewhere in
Anglophone Africa, arose out of the export to the Empire of the British system of schooling.
Just as the personnel and grants had to come from Britain, so did the books and other
apparatus for education. Needless to add there was the fact that English was the medium
of instruction and syllabuses were entirely British in content. In terms of book publishing,
all that was done was to run-off additional copies of the same books already in use in Britain
and send them for distribution.
Later the British Government realized the need for producing a body of various professionals
with sound knowledge of the local environment. There was need for books which related
to the peoples immediate needs before introducing them to studies further a eld. This
kind of awareness triggered writing and publishing of books specically for developing
countries. As there were no local authors, the enterprising British administrators and
teachers working in the colonies lled the vacuum. They used their eld experience to
adapt and revise the contents of existing books. The result of this change was a signicant
contribution to the localization of schoolbooks. One example was The Oxford Courses and
Readers that were specially written for pupils whose rst language was not English. It was
a continental approach to local books. A direct outcome of the Colonial Ofce policy in
the 1930s was a secondary school history text book, Tropical Africa in World History by R.T.
Barren (OUP).
22
These efforts soon paved way to regional adaptations and the writing of textbooks in
history, geography and administration with particular attention to the different regions of
developing countries. Hence Uganda was geographically bound to the East African region
with operational headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya. Even then these books were still being
written and published abroad as there were no facilities or skills available locally.
Solaru recounts an interesting and true story that students of developing countries did not
want the revision of books. Students believed in measuring academic standards by using
the same books used by European students at Cambridge, as the holder of a Cambridge
School Certicate was highly rated in African society.
4.2 The East African Literature Bureau
By the end of World War II, a brisk trade had risen in specially produced local books. But
it was in 1945 that a real boost to the production of local books was started, when an East
African Governors Conference, chaired by Sir Philip Mitchell was held. At this sitting two
decisions were made regarding the future of local literature in the region. One decision
endorsed the need to establish a printing press at Makerere College, and the other was the
appointment of an expert on African literature. This expert would work out details of a
programme to establish publishing of literature in major vernacular languages for use in
schools and adult literacy campaigns. Mrs. Elspeth Huxley was appointed. Although she
possessed no publishing experience, she had received her early education in Kenya and was
an established author of writings on East Africa. Her terms of reference were: to carry out
an East African literature survey to establish what was available, and in what quantities,
and to make recommendations to help establish what kinds of books Africans needed most.
The survey which lasted three months covered all the east African countries namely Kenya,
Tanganyika and Uganda. At the end of it, she submitted her report in which she summed
up the condition of literature available as follows.
a) Demand for simple books in all languages far exceeds supply;
b) There is almost complete absence of vernacular books of special interest to
women;
c) The religious category is at present the best served of all;
d) Swahili (East African language) literature is well served, but there is still a
shortage of books of general interest to adults;
e) Vernacular editions of ofcial reports are seldom published but often
wanted.
She concluded that the situation of vernacular literature was very bleak.
On the issue of what books Africans needed most, the survey revealed that Africans wanted
books that made them literate, so that they could acquire skills to improve their standard
23
of living. Books of knowledge about history, geography and recreation could follow this.
Consequently, the East African Literature Bureau was formed, as an organization of the East
African High Commission, in 1948.
The Bureau was established with its headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya and with branches
in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania and Kampala, Uganda respectively. Its objectives were as
follows:
i) Stimulation of thought through books and booklets about the countrys natural
resources, their care and use; the process of government; head and disease;
its citizens responsibilities a subject of primary importance in the changing
society of East Africa;
ii) Books and charts for the education of the child and the adult;
iii) Books to encourage an interest in reading for other purposes than for immediate
practical end;
iv) Assistance to the indigenous authors in order that they may take part in the
provision of books for their own people;
v) The development of periodical literature;
vi) The building up of a library service.
Charles Granston Richards was appointed as the rst director but the work could not take
off immediately due to the absence of skilled staff. They had to come from Britain and in
1949 they arrived. Almost immediately, press advertisements began to appear in academic
journals such as East African Law Review and East African Journal seeking or soliciting for
manuscripts.
The scheme showed promise, especially at Makerere College where good manuscripts
were received from young writers. Some of those published were: Growing Up by David
Sebukima; A Hitch over the Weekend by Dr. D. Devercharia; Gambeshi by Hilda, and The Land
is Ours by J. Kariuki.
By the end of 1950 the Bureau had published 65 titles in a total of 350,000 copies. From 1956
to 1957, the Bureau published 53 titles and reprinted 22 of them. Between 1959 and 1962,
it had published a total of 86 titles and had reprinted 37 of them. The gures for Kenya
and Tanzania appear separate in those reports. Important to reveal here is the point that
these titles were for Uganda alone. By the countrys standards, the gures showed a bright
future.
4.3 Local Churches
The role of local churches in the evolution of books in Uganda cannot be ignored. In 1948,
the Verona Fathers of Gulu, northern Uganda, purchased a second hand printing press, and
ten years later in 1958 started publishing Leadership Magazine and Lobo Mewa newspaper.
24
This example was followed by the publishing of a magazine called Mwebinga in Runyoro/
Rutoro languages of Western Uganda. In East and North-Eastern Uganda, Tororo Diocese
begun publishing in 1957; a monthly magazine called Erwom KTeso. In South-western
Uganda, one called Agetereine in Runyankore/Ruchiga began and in the Central region,
Kizito Magazine began appearing in 1958 and in 1962, Masaka still in the Central province,
started publishing a magazine called Mutabaganya. In English, Katigondo National Seminary
began in 1960 publishing African Ecclesiastical Review.
The contribution of the church did not stop at providing church news only but these
magazines provided a forum for spreading political awareness. Ginyera Pinchwa supports
this view in respect of Lobo Mewa and Leadership Magazine.
4.4 Uganda newspaper history
Newspaper publishing in Uganda is a century old. Tracing this history we nd that the
very earliest paper to be published in Uganda was Mengo Notes. The rst newspaper was a
slim journal, 5 x9 inches in size. It appeared monthly and contained four pages, increased
after the rst year to eight pages. After two years its title was changed to Uganda Notes. This
newspaper was printed at the C.M.S. Industrial Mission and both type and paper were of
good quality. It circulated among the British in Uganda and, being largely a missionary
production. Mengo Notes was published in May 1900. The next newspaper was the Uganda
Herald that appeared in 1912 (Sir Albert Cook, 1936: 27-46).
Ugandas press history shows that between 1986 and 1991, there were approximately 50
newspapers and magazines. But because of economic reasons, like lack of adequate capital,
high taxes on newsprint, poor management systems in the media houses, most of these papers
have folded leaving a staggering 23 26 newspapers and three magazines. The three dailies
included, The New Vision, The Monitor and Bukedde which only circulated between them
about 80,000 on average daily, covering approximately 6 percent of the entire population
of 30,000,000 people in Uganda. (This is loosely translated to be approximately 1.2 million
people, taking the average ratio of one newspaper per 11 persons who can read).
The independent press itself enjoyed a wide latitude of freedom, including the freedom
to criticise individual government ofcials in the most scurrilous language. Some of the
most stingent of these publications in Uganda were Uganda Condential, Munansi and The
Shariat which had been allowed to operate without interference since they were launched.
These have since wound up as a result of both economic and political pressures with time.
Government has also been known to exercise its rights to reply in the pages of the papers
and on local FM radio stations.
However, what the media organisations in Uganda are doing , is to supply the population
with information which the people are able to access and make informed and reasoned
25
decisions. With their wide range of news and opinions the newspapers in Uganda help
the people understand and keep check on both public and private sectors of society. They
thus have considerable responsibilities. The people in Uganda have relative choice of many
different and competing media (STA 1998).
4.5 Post independence Book Publishing
Uganda gained political independence from Britain in October 1962. Becoming politically
independent, the reigns of power and consequently the destiny of the country rested on its citizens.
The then British participation in education changed. As an emergent state, massive efforts were
taken to reduce the bottlenecks of development i.e. disease, ignorance and poverty. These triplets
of backwardness were to be reduced through education. It was in education that lay the greatest
force that could be used to redress the past shortcomings. More importantly, it was the most
reliable investment Uganda could make for the accelerated economic and social progress.
The countrys leaders, full of political energy, embarked on extensive school enrolment,
restructuring syllabuses to meet challenges of a new nation, created more schools, opened
public libraries and began massive training of skilled personnel especially health, commerce,
technical and teacher training. The opening of various colleges of higher education in 1964
is the case in point. The sum total of these developments meant a corresponding provision
of books and scholastic materials. Admittedly, there were no facilities yet to provide them.
For the interim period, the state continued to import from Britain. Meanwhile, the leaders
entertained ideas of starting an indigenous publishing industry.
Basing their efforts on the UNESCO Conference of African states on the Development of
Education in Africa, Uganda was quick to realize the importance of local publishing vis--
vis foreign participation. Talking on the subject in 1967, Dr. S.J. Luyimbazi Zake, the then
Minister of Education, said of Uganda Publishing House:
Obviously, if Uganda Publishing House produced a book, it was going to displace
some other book, and certain people, therefore, decided to be obstructive. At the
moment no less than 60 percent of the textbooks used in our schools in Uganda are
published by Longmans....
While denying that Uganda authorities had any intention of expropriating any publishers
copyright, the Minister added:
We are only determined to develop our own potential of which there is plenty and
to provide our own facilities for publishing. Who ordained that if a textbook is not
published by Longman, it is not a textbook at all?
Both questions revealed two things. First, it showed that there was some book trade between
Uganda and Britain. Secondly the emergence of indigenous publishing was irksome to the
British publishers who had enjoyed some monopoly of the book market. The founding of
Uganda Publishing House was seen as a bottleneck to their business.
26
That reaction was voiced by G.R. Davis in his report on the events in the British industry. In
that report he cited a few words by Maurice Macmillan who said:
Africans are determined to write and print their own books, and that being so, all
his company had done was to be commercially alert and get in rst.
All said the emergence of indigenous publishing in Uganda was not an act of sabotage to the
foreign publishers; rather it was an honest step towards self help without stopping outsiders.
This point is supported by the fact that though there was a publishing industry in the
country, the government continued to import text books from Britain and that importation
of books to Uganda is still tax free. Besides Uganda is a signatory of the Florence Agreement
including the Nairobi Protocol of 1976 which came into force on the 2
nd
January 1982.
4.6 The Structure of the Industry
Theoretically, the industry can be divided into two - i.e. private and public sectors. The private
sector can further be divided into indigenous and foreign owned publishing companies.
The public sector though small, is represented by The Uganda Printing and Publishing
Corporation, Law Development Centre and Lands and Surveys, Makerere University Press
and the New Vision Printing Publishing Corporation.
4.6.1 Public Sector Publishing
By public sector publishing is meant publishing that is nanced and controlled by the
government. A brief inquiry into its working should reveal the role it plays. And they
are: Government Printer, and Lands and Surveys, Government Educational Institutions
like Makerere University, and Research Institutes like National Agricultural Research
Organisation (NARO).
Government Printer
Government Printer was established as a Publishing House in 1900. It is directly administered
from the Presidents Ofce. Its particular function is to be the sole printer and publisher
of government publications. The working of the establishment is rather unique. There is
no editorial acquisition and none of the marketing to any noticeable degree. All material
to be published emanates from government sources i.e. Presidents Ofce, Ministries or
Departments controlled wholly or largely by government. The government printer prints and
publishes all types of government publications but the most common ones are: Government
Bills and Acts, Parliamentary debates, Government Gazette, Legal Supplements and Reports
of Government. It is also active in publishing literature in pamphlet form and posters meant
for educating the public on various issues such as environment and health. Copyright for
all publications resides in the government and sale of the publications is limited for one
reason and that is, there is no clear establishment for the purpose such as the bookselling
division of HMSO and the buying habit is also a weakness. Secondly, consent of the owner
- Department or Ministry is sought before any sale is carried out. In many cases, this is not
27
forthcoming. Bureaucratic red tape and lack of policy on how to widely make its products
available on market hinder the wide circulation of such publications. But for all those meant
for public education, and awareness, the government releases them easily and in quantities
sufcient for a majority of the English reading public.
Uganda Literature Bureau
This organisation is not new in terms of its establishment in Uganda. It was originally
a branch of the East African Literature Bureau. Because of the political disagreements
among East African Presidents in the 1970s, the East African Community collapsed and
Uganda created Uganda Literature Bureau as Kenya renamed it Kenya Literature Bureau.
The collapse meant the total dissolution of all bodies formerly under the Community. The
objective and work of the Bureau remain the same as before but its functioning has been
declining. The main reason is that nance to meet its obligations is not easily forthcoming
from the government. Government has eventually closed the organisation.
Lands and Survey Department
Map production is restricted for ofcial purposes to the Lands and Survey Department
which combines the whole operation as cartographer, map printer and map publisher. The
major continuing work of cartography and the unceasing revision of its own maps make
it a separate special activity of public sector publishing in Uganda. The problems of map
publishing largely centre on lack of modern machinery and materials.
4.7 The Private Sector
In the recent decades more publishing houses have been established. These include among
others: MK Publishers, Fountain Publishers and Mukono Bookshop Ltd, Mastermind, Net
Media, Joibaso, Baroques, Ocean, TCGR.
Centenary Publishing House (CPH) is an active Christian publishing house in Uganda.
Its parent organisation is the Church of Uganda and was founded in 1969. CPH was
established to make available, books of religious nature, at fair prices, to the expanding
Christian community in the country. With initial success, its programme enlarged to include
educational, childrens and general books. Publishing is carried out in English as well as a
few local languages especially Luganda.
Uganda Publishing House (UPH) was an indigenous publishing house in the country before
it folded up in mid 1980s. Its parent organisation was Milton Obote Foundation and was
founded in 1966. Its rst managing director, Mr. Archer, maintained reasons behind an
indigenous publishing house as economic in the sense that if a book was written, printed and
published locally, then the only expenditure of foreign exchange would be for the purchase
of paper, and this was the aim of Uganda Publishing House.
28
To ensure efcient distribution of its books, the Milton Obote Foundation established in 1968,
a sister organisation called Uganda Schools Supply Ltd (USSL). This body was concerned
with books as well as scholastic materials. And to succeed in their duties, USSL established
branches in all major towns of Uganda as chain supplier. But because UPH is dormant now,
the activities of USSL have come to a standstill. Instead it has been able to survive by selling
old outdated books and stationery. The main reasons for this state of the affairs are: lack of
trained staff, funds, creativity on the part of the existing staff and general awareness by the
potential authors that UPH is functioning as well as the establishment of new companies
that have innovative ideas and capacity to break into the market.
Uganda Bookshop is the oldest bookshop in the country. It was incorporated in Uganda on
the 14
th
May, 1927 as a commercial organisation. It is an organisation which used to print,
publish and sell its products too. The Publishing Department published general trade books,
primary and secondary school textbooks and reading charts. Its publishing programme was
carried out both in English and local languages especially Luganda, Nkore-Kiga languages
which are spoken by half the countrys population. Uganda Bookshop has its own printing
press, named after Alexander Mackay. This press, Mackay Press, is capable of printing many
of the textbooks, charts and stationery with which Uganda Bookshop activities depend on.
It also has its own book distribution set up. It has a few bookshops remaining open from a
chain of bookshops it had in many parts of the country.
Fountain Publishers is one of East Africas leading publishing houses in Education and
Trade publishing which was founded in 1988. Fountain Publishers holds a published list
of over 500 titles with an average of 40 titles a year, in areas of politics, economics, tourism,
culture, ction, poetry, childrens literature, and educational titles. Fountain Publishers
intends to continue publishing not only for the East African region but also for the whole
region on African issues.
MK publishers Ltd is one of the leading book publishing house in Uganda presently. MK
Publishers (U) Ltd has a published list of over 300 titles covering, among others, the whole
range of textbooks in the Primary School Curriculum, secondary school subjects, general
books, academic and scholarly works both in foreign and indigenous languages.
Mukono Bookshop Ltd is another publishing house that is operating at the moment. Mukono
Bookshop Ltd publishes books for pre-primary, primary, secondary, and higher institutions
of learning in Uganda.
4.8 Foreign Companies
The existence of foreign establishments in Uganda is not new. Their contact with Uganda
began during the colonial period when they were responsible for supplying books and
scholastic materials. What is new is that they opened their ofces in Uganda soon after the
country gained political independence. Three of them have been operating in the capacities
of subsidiary companies and one maintains the ofce of an agent but based in the regional
29
ofce in Nairobi. The subsidiary companies are: Longman Uganda Limited, Macmillan
and St. Paul Publications. The ofce of the agent represents Oxford University Press (OUP),
Longhorn, and East African Educational Publishers (EAEP).
Longman Uganda Limited is a subsidiary of Longman Group UK Ltd. It is an example of
foreign capital investment in Uganda. The activities of Longman Group UK Ltd began in 1964
when the rst representative was appointed. With a bright promise of the future, Longman
Group opened their ofces in the country in 1965 thus founding Longman Uganda Ltd.
The main aim at the beginning was to satisfy the needs of the expanded primary education
at that time. Using both local and expatriate authors, Longman was able to consolidate its
position and within two years, they were responsible for 60% of the books used in schools.
And because of its initial success, Longman Uganda extended its activities to include trade
books, secondary school textbooks and books in different themes in local languages. But
due to political upheavals over the period of time, the activities of Longman Uganda Ltd
have drastically been curtailed. Longmans strategy had been to produce books in the UK
and Hong Kong and the nished products air freighted to Uganda where they are sold to
institutions and bookshops.
Because Longman books were those prescribed on the syllabuses, Longman did not spend
much on promotion. They simply informed the Ministry of Education and established
bookshops, the availability of stock and waited for order to come in. The problems of
Longman Uganda Ltd are different from those experienced by the indigenous companies.
Theirs are: political uncertainty in the country and economic hardships of the target buyers of
their books. By political uncertainty here is meant constant violent changes in governments
frequently sandwiched with looting of stocks including books and/or persistent ghting in
some areas of the country thereby limiting wide distribution of books.
Macmillan opened their ofce in Uganda in 1965 but had a well developed publishing
foundation in the East African education market much earlier. They were responsible for
supplying primary school books that were chosen by the Department of Education. But
when Uganda attained independence, Macmillan had to change according to the local
requirements. This meant publishing books written to suit Ugandan needs of the period.
As a result Macmillan became associated with Uganda Publishing House. They knew that
UPH was new and therefore not very competent in handling the volume of work it was
founded to do. Their collaboration included development of manpower for UPH, editing
and sharing publishing expenses. But all Macmillan was doing was to give light support to
UPH in training a few of its staff while actually developing its own programme alongside
UPH but using UPH platform to capture the educational market. For undisclosed reasons
Macmillan fell out with UPH. They are still being represented and are publishing for the
Ugandan market.
St. Paul Publications is a branch of an international organisation called Daughters of St.
Paul. Its headquarters is in Slough, England. It is a Christian publishing house as well as a
major bookseller in Uganda. As a publisher, it was founded in 1979. The organisation has
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a resident Director and Editor. Their publishing programme coves subjects on religion and
moral formation and are now engaged in producing readers for pre- and primary schools.
They also publish magazines, leaets and Christian posters. Production of their books and
posters, leaets is done abroad. It is only marketing and distribution which is done in
Uganda.
Oxford University Press (OUP) maintains the ofce of an agent in Kampala with Gustro
being their representative. All its activities are administered from Nairobi where there is
the regional ofce for East Africa. Ever since it started participating in Ugandas book scene,
it has been responsible for the publication of the English series called Oxford English Course
series. This series is in use in the primary schools.
4.9 Publishing trends in Uganda since 1989
The publishing industry in a country can be viable if the infrastructure and resources are
sufciently developed. Ideally, size of market, amount of disposable income, literacy,
language, reading habits, libraries, bookshops, environment, education and government
policies profoundly inuence on publishing in any nation. This review is about the publishing
industry in Uganda. Against that, is documented the countrys publishing industry in the
last three decades.
The decades 1970s and 1980s, were very bad times for publishing in Uganda. Donors could
not help declare it as the worst scenario on the African continent. Symptoms included;
closure of local publishing houses, departure of foreign publishers, re-direction of the once
viable printing sector into jobbing work, closure of bookshops, wholesale importation of
books for education, and publication, albeit, irregularly of newspapers. The root cause of all
these, was bad governance that affected all aspects life. Since the 1990s, Ugandas publishing
industry has been making steady and signicant developments towards recovery and
sustainability. In this section I examine publishing and book-trade in the 1990s onwards
as well as factors that have supported and affected its activities. It serves as an update of
literature on publishing in Uganda.
One indicator of a recovering publishing industry is the range of its products. It is encouraging
that Uganda publishing industry is exhibiting a wide range of information products that are
distinctly associated with different types of publishing that is, book, newspaper, journal and
magazine publishing. Publishing in Uganda continues to attract more players. In the public
sector, Uganda Printing & Publishing Corporation (UPPC), The New Vision, Ministries,
NCDC, National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) Law Development Centre,
(LDC), Inspectorate of Government (IGG) are main public sector publishers.
NGOs, local and international are publishing different types of materials, monographs,
newsletters, brochures, reports and even books etc. TASO, FEMRITE, UNDP and the World
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Bank are major examples in the international group while other NGOs publish basically
newsletters, manuals etc to promote their activities. Use of ISBN and ISSN is stabilising
in Ugandans publishing efforts. Although the National Library of Uganda is the Agency
that has been authorised by law to allocate these numbers, still it is the Uganda Publishers
Association doing it. Uganda is member of International Publishers Association (IPA).
Book publishing remains the most enduring type of publishing in Uganda. Before 1992 no
statistics show Ugandas output. This indicates that no statistics were ever completed.
Newspaper publishing is perhaps the most dynamic area of publishing in Uganda today.
Over 20 newspapers are published weekly. Big ones running at 40 plus pages are The
Monitor and The New Vision, both dailies. Print run for each is above 35,000 copies. They are
colour printed and reect high standards of publishing. The New Vision publishes in 4 other
regional local languages Ateso, Orumuri, Rupiny and Bukedde (daily) with a print-run of 5,000
copies each. These are weeklies. Every part of the country receives papers within 12 hours
after publication. Investors include foreign companies. UNESCO gures are not reliable on
this subject. Though small in relation to the countrys population, they are an indication in
the right direction. They are sustaining the reading habit and fullling the insatiable thirst
for information on social and current affairs.
Magazine publishing is proving popular in Uganda today. More than twenty magazines
are published and of very high standard. They are well designed and printed in glossy
paper. Printing is done in Uganda. Readership is diverse. For instance, youth are served
by some magazines like the Secrets; leadership magazine is an historical one for a general
readership while the Link magazine is for covering political events in the Great Lakes region.
Success is business-oriented magazine. The Architect is for architects as Safe Motherhood,
African Woman is for women. New Era is general magazines by Uganda Women Writers
Association. Insight is a social and business magazine while Tarehe Sita is a general magazine
from Uganda Peoples Defence Force. The reason of including this here is that there is a
segment of market that could benet from its products had a better business model been
found to get information widely accessible.
Publishing in local language is an important means of communicating culture. This area
of publishing is currently restricted to a handful of languages. Uganda is a country with
more than fty languages representing different ethnic groupings. Languages in which
books and newspapers are mainly published are: Ateso, Luo, Luganda, Lunyankole/Ruchiga,
Lunyoro/Lutoro. But following the introduction of mother tongue instruction in 2007 writing
and publishing learning materials in various languages has increased.
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Despite publishing in local languages, there is low reading of books and newspapers in
local languages. This has been attributed largely to low literacy, poverty, poor distribution,
scarcity of published materials, preponderance of oral culture and low reading habits. But a
closer examination of factors leading to this state of affairs brings to light other fundamental
factors. These include low level of writing in local languages due to inadequate skills, lack
of signicant knowledge of the nature of the reading public. Way back in 1980s, a famous
Kenyan writer, Prof. Grace Ogot found that many writers in African or locals languages had
not studied the reading publics enough. There were many different reading publics or target
groups in local languages as they are in English. For instance these should differentiate
between children, women, youth and so on. On another level the writers should care for
language differences, cultural differences, education levels and so on and location as either
urban or rural. These populations require the kind of style of presenting information basing
on their characteristics. This is what has so far not fully been recognised and appreciated.
4.10 Co-publishing
Eminent writers on book publishing (Albatch 1996, Victor Nwanko 1996, Ian Montagnes
1996, and Chakava 1995) have given constructive ideas about the subject of co-publishing.
The summary of their ideas is that co-publishing as a business model in publishing is actually
benecial if well understood and exploited. Co-publishing in Uganda exists and is bound
to expand. James Currey/Fountain Publishers is an example that has had a successful
partnership. Areas of collaboration are wide. They range from production to distribution.
For example, Uganda publishers nd it cheaper to print abroad while their counterparts
market the product. Local publishers know that quality is quite difcult to get in Uganda,
beating deadlines is also a problem and even the cost of inputs, smartness in costing projects
for a poor market and printing make local products more expensive. This arrangement has
however remained mainly a north south affair.
4.11 Rise of Informal Publishing
A rather disturbing development in Ugandas publishing industry is the rise of informal
publishing which came as a response to the critical shortage of reading materials dating
back to 1970s. Right from the primary school through university type written texts on
stencils are duplicated, bound together and sold to the market especially schools. Is this
a fraud or impure publishing? Under normal circumstances this is grey literature that is
not available through normal book selling channels. They are characterised by limited
distribution, poor bibliographic control, and small press runs and non- standard formats.
Besides, these materials are not vetted, nor properly edited. They are merely typewritten or
word processed and mimeographed and covers printed to give a fair look. Products of the
informal publishing have a market among students since they tend to address what students
want most that is, written according to examination. Regardless of problems connected with
their nature, Ugandan publishers agree, these publications destroy market for published
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books. And there are no doubts children and teachers nd them useful. The popularity of
mimeographs is a lesson for mainstream publishers to take seriously. But the effect of this
form of publishing is that products encourage students to read them only for purposes of
passing examination. For this review, the signicant point that comes out is that the specic
school market wants something to read. Books published in mainstream publishing in
most cases are priced higher than informal books. Marketing outlets are teachers themselves
although they are beginning to appear in bookshops as well. Another point to take count of
is that informal publishing as an awkward business model is a direct result of publishing
industrys inability to saturate the book market and with affordable products. Bookshops are
few, inadequately stocked and this has led people have to be innovative to ll the gaps. This
is an indicator that reliable business publishing models that ensure equity are needed to allow
same products to be marketed in various ways to reach different audience quite easily.
4.12 Scholarly Publishing
Scholarly publishing is the domain of universities and research institutions everywhere in
the world. If, as has been said, the true university is a collection of books, then university
presses have much to do with the making of universities. The essential purpose of presses,
as the publishing divisions of their parent institutions, is to serve scholars and scholarships
in general. They exist on the cutting edge of knowledge and often function as the natural
outlet for information, theory, and methodology that will inuence human endeavour in
the decades and generations to come.
All universities have three paramount functions: teaching, research, and dissemination of
the results of scholarly inquiry. It is one of the noblest duties of a university to advance
knowledge, and to diffuse it not merely among those who can attend the daily lectures- but
far and wide (Sheldon Meyer & Phillabaum, nd). University presses do not serve only the
scholarly community, many of their books also help bridge the gaps that sometimes appear
between the academic community and society as a whole. In this broader area, university
presses function in much the same manner as commercial book publishers, although there
are crucial differences.
A University press normally reects in its publishing program the strengths of the institutions
faculty, as well as the principal interests of the university and the larger community in which
both exist. It serves the faculty and the university best by providing an imprint and publishing
program comparable in quality to the nest educational institutions of similar nature. The
imprint of a university press is typically controlled by an editorial board appointed from
the faculty, occasionally with some members from outside the university. Each publishing
project or proposal is subject to independent appraisal by qualied reviewers, and the
editorial board decides, on the basis of these reviews and the recommendations of the presss
management, whether to authorize publication of the work in question. The board thus
34
stands behind the imprint of the university and helps insure the quality and signicance of
the books on the presss list contend Sheldon Meyer & Phillabaum (nd).
A review of literature and observation of what is happening in Uganda reveals that this is still
a grey area of publishing although it has been going on to some extent. Although Uganda
has about twenty universities public and private but much of the publishing is concentrated
in few universities namely Makerere, Mbarara, Nkozi and Kyambogo Universities. At
Makerere University it is the work of the University Press, that was launched in 1995
and Nkozi University that followed a little later. The Presses aim at publishing scholarly
monographs, and academic texts, encouraging academic staff and students to publish worthy
academic works in books and journals, obtaining copyright from authors and publishers
to reproduce essential reading materials. Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threat
analysis as a yardstick for evaluating its performance yield some problems. The Press does
not have the editorial policy, manuscripts come to it unsolicited. Their products are not in
bookshops. Potential market does not even know the presses publish books, but they do.
Bottlenecks include lack of policy to guide the selection of what is needed most. Low print
runs of about 500 copies that make sale price too high. There are no full time staffs to run
the presses on commercial basis. The single greatest problem facing university press today
and tomorrow is nancing. Scholarly publishing is subsidized publishing unlike perhaps
Oxford University Press or John Hopkins University Press in the USA.
One main aspect of university publishing is focused on providing distance education students
with packaged reading material. All those universities run distance education programmes.
Although no evaluation has been done on their distance education materials, one thing
often heard from students of distance studies is that the materials are not enough. They do
not have enough time to read them because they come for face-to-face for two hectic weeks.
And when they go back to their work stations, it is difcult to access the materials because
locations/libraries or centres that have been given responsibility to keep them for students
are far apart and do not keep enough copies to go round to those in need. This is one gap
about these materials.
The administrators of the distance programmes, admit, yes materials are not enough because
they do not have money to print many copies to reach every one and the student numbers
are in thousands. This means there is a critical shortage of reading materials for distance
education. For the purpose of this review it is important to note that shortcoming and also to
note that there are no better models by which distance education students effectively access
information products at the moment besides teachers resource centres in the districts. It also
comes to light that provision of library services for distance learners is grossly inadequate.
Libraries especially public libraries are very few and poorly funded if at all. They are not
even available in some places. University libraries are available but distance education
35
students are poor in library skills and well as computer literacy. They do not even have time
to come to the library because at the time they come for face-to-face, it is a crush programme
without any moment for library use. Alternative methodology of publishing educational
materials for distance learners would surely be a solution.
The other aspect is the publishing of research output in the forms of peer reviewed papers,
monographs and books. I must say this is a problematic area too. Many reasons have been
advanced. One main one is Universities here do not have effective presses. Even for this
university, little is published as described below.
In the journal publishing specically, the publish or perish syndrome, success in publishing
in international journals, or difculties in publishing research results internationally are partly
reasons there is journal publishing in Uganda to some extent and in institutions of higher
learning or universities. Quite often overlooked are other important factors like sustainable
nancing of journals, distribution and international vetting. Publishing of journals appears
to have been trapped along these times. About 10 journals are published. But the major
concern is regularity. Journals operate on very insecure nancial base. Sendikadiwa (1999)
expresses concern that even the old ones like Uganda Journal 1934, Makerere Medical Journal
(MMJ) 1964 and Mawazo 1968 went into limbo in 1986 and reappeared in 1996. Some others
including Makerere Law Journal, 1975 have been restarted and new ones like African Crop
Science Journal 1993 - Dialogue 1994 Uganda Environmental and Natural Research Management
Policy and Law 1992, African Journal of Peace and Human Rights, 1995 -, PIC News, 1998
East African Journal of Peace and Human Rights, Journal of African Religion and Philosophy 1989,
Education Journal 1998, Makerere University Research Journal (MURJ) 2006 are irregularly being
published. And they are not even cited in international databases such as ISI or abstracts.
Their future appears bleak. Continuity cannot be guaranteed unless they are subsidised
somehow or other business models are found to make their visibility easier than at present.
Most of these are locally funded an arrangement that is problematic indeed. Because of the
disappointing picture of journal publishing in the country, most academics publish abroad.
Even there, the possibility of getting a paper published is very hard. Uganda universities
are also unable to subscribe for the isolated journals where Ugandan papers appear. This is
another challenge.
There is also another big challenge in universities. For a long time, universities have been
used to producing lots of research dissertations in paper form. These materials are continually
and quietly increasing in numbers and are becoming out of date in libraries. This brings in
a big gap in academic information products. What could have come up as local content
contribution to knowledge on the Internet is idle and dormant. A versatile model is needed
that ensures dissertations, books and journals are published widely and made available.
36
According to a seminar on strengthening scholarly publishing in Africa held in Zanzibar
in 2002, it was reported that despite general improvement of professional standards of
publishing during the 1990s, few African publishers brought out scholarly works. Scholarly
publishing needed vibrant universities in order to ourish; but since the drying-up of
funding for higher education in the 1970s and 1980s and the consequent collapse of African
universities as centres of research, university publishing has remained weak. Participants
recommended that for African scholarly publications to be of excellent quality, on par
with the best being produced elsewhere in the world, a number of specic needs must
be met in the areas of editing and production, marketing and distribution. Participants
emphasized in particular the importance of harnessing information technology, forming
strategic partnerships, strengthening journal publishing and improving training. In
terms of the PALM AFRICA project, their recommendations are in line with the project
aspirations. For instance participants called for new forms of collaboration and sharing
of resources as a means of strengthening scholarly publishing. Faculties needed to work
closely and creatively with publishers to identify theses, dissertations and other research
work with publishing potential. They identied co-publishing, selling rights and licensing;
working together with other parts of the book chain including booksellers; collaboration
on distribution and collaboration on training among others (Hussein & Priestley, 2002) as
important considerations. Ouya & Smart (2005) when reporting ndings of open access
survey of Africa published journals also raised the issue of training, stafng, funding and
indexing as being crucial. Uganda was respondent. Concerns that came up about open
access included uncertainty about sustainability on the Internet, Blanket approach to Open
Access, Archiving, Technological limitations, and loss of subscription revenue.
4.13 Electronic Publishing
So far it is noted that publishing in Uganda has for the last one hundred years been based on
the traditional publishing model where books, newspapers, magazines etc are published in
the print mode. This model has denitely supported the initiatives it was established to do but
cannot be said to have solved all our problems. As the world is in constant state of transition,
there have emerged new technologies such as TV; lms Internet and World Wide Web that
have scuttled the supremacy of the print model of doing business in the information world.
While stakeholders are continuing with print, there is a generation now nding it easier to
use technology based information to prospect for information and knowledge easily. This
change into new era of publishing has dawned on Uganda publishing industry as well and
is in tandem with sharing global trends that advances in information and communication
management, knowledge creation and sharing are based on information technologies that
are contributing to the solution. First this is because ICTs are now dynamically inuencing
our life styles and social consciousness is providing us a best tool for sharing and mutual
communication. Secondly we must remember the possible contribution of publishing to
effective and stable production by several models. For instance, individuals and organisations
37
including government, educational and research institutions are creating web sites on the
Internet to create more visibility and marketing of themselves, their products and trading.
Publishing houses in Uganda have also cashed in. The Ugandan newspapers, The Monitor
and The New Vision and sister papers in local languages are now online. This is in keeping
with advances of communication technology. Electronic publishing includes the digital
publication of e-books and electronic articles and the development of digital libraries and
catalogues. E-publishing is described as the use of electronic means of communication to
make information available to the public.
Briey it can be said that publishing in Uganda is neither exclusively educational nor trade
publishing. It is a basket of educational, trade and religious publishing. Much as it is the
correct combination for Uganda, we can not proudly say that the book market has been
lled. There is a huge potential in the country. Gaps exist in the market. First, inadequacy of
funds - has crippled the industry to a large extent. Lack of trade tools - catalogues, industry
journals for the effective promotion of books and their distribution speak for themselves.
Coupled with that, is the weak national bibliographic service at the National Reference
Library. This has left a big gap in which nobody knows what is being published, where
and by whom. The countrys book laws have so far proved most ineffective. The National
Library Act 2004, The Makerere University Legal Deposit Act, 1958 and Institute of Public
Administration Library Deposit and Documentation Act 1969, are weak and exist in book
only. No publisher has ever been accused in court for defying them. The effect is that it
is quite difcult to acquire any new book, and in fact it is much easier to buy from abroad
because tools of reference are readily available. Scarcity of trained human resource explains
why some houses are dormant. Then there is the endemic complaint of foreign books being
largely irrelevant in the public library system. This is a self created problem. Librarians
and publishers alike interact little. Irrespective of that there are common platforms such as
Publishers Association, Uganda Booksellers and Uganda Printers Association in Uganda
and National Book Trust of Uganda for the publishing fraternity to interact and inuence
policy.
4.14 Role of Government in publishing
There is a close relationship between publishing industry and government. Government of
Uganda involvement in publishing is visible in four areas i.e. government as publisher, as
regulator, as human resource developer and as a distributor. As a publisher the role of state
is limited to materials emanating from its departments. Since 1900 when Government Printer
was established, the state has continued to publish Government information materials. This
arrangement was modied in 1992 when the status of Government Printer was changed
into a public sector institution, becoming Uganda Printing and Publishing Corporation
(UPPC). The move aimed at making UPPC a self-sustaining organisation providing
printing and publishing facilities to government, private individuals and organisations, and
38
acting as an in-service training school for its staff and other organisations. By Decree 7 of
1973 Government created the National Curriculum Development Centre (NCDC) at a time
publishing in Uganda was not yet bad but signs of volatile political situation threatened
supply of books to schools. NCDC was created among others to investigate and evaluate the
need for syllabus revision and curriculum reform at primary, secondary, tertiary institutions
and to initiate new syllabuses, to draft teaching aids and instructional materials, to publish
information for propaganda purposes. NCDC for most of its operations has been engaged
in writing manuscripts.
In the newspaper sector, Government of Uganda has always maintained a newspaper house.
Since independence onwards, Uganda Argus, Voice of Uganda, Uganda Times and The New
Vision are names of papers succeeding one another. The New Vision exists legally (Uganda
Parliament 1987). Its mission includes publishing government newspapers in English and
local languages in Uganda. It carries out any other activities that may be carried on by a
printing press or publishing house.
The State has a role in regulating what is read in Uganda. In the education sector, it has
textbook and instructional materials policy. The policy, announced in 1993 removed the
monopoly of NCDC writing books for schools, liberalised the supply of instructional materials
to schools, and introduced vetting of all books and other materials going to primary and
secondary schools. The policy decentralised selection of materials to school level. Local
publishers welcomed the policy as it levelled the playing ground, which hitherto favoured
only foreign publishers.
Government buys books for primary, and to a limited extent for the tertiary institutions.
The major one is primary education and to some extent secondary schools. Over the last ten
years, the Ministry of Education has been implementing Support Uganda Primary Education
Reform (SUPER) Programme using World Bank Funds. SUPER I was implemented in 1993.
It catered for primary 5 to 7. Local publishers supplied 53, 344 books or 7.5 percent of total
book stock. SUPER II was implemented in 1995. It covered primary 2 4. Local publishers
supplied 62,160 books making it 8.6 percent. SUPER III was implemented in 1997. Local
publishers supplied 217,459 out of 2.1 million books that were supplied. This accounted for
10.4 percent. Under SUPER IV in 1998, the local publishers supplied 260, 540 books out of
1.5 million books thereby contributing 17.5 percent. Analysis of performance indicates that:
The pattern of book trade to primary and secondary school has not changed signicantly.
The traditional players Longman and Macmillan continue to dominate the school market;
co-publishing is a reality as shown by Fountain and other relationships; despite of the
US$55.00 vetting fee per title, some local publishers are increasingly taking a position in the
book market. It is to be noted that though a few local publishers compete to get their titles
approved by the Ministry of Education and Sports, they are quite many in number. Only a
handful is able to publish a book in a year, some none at all.
39
The second area of regulation covers the Press. There is the Press and Journalists Statute,
No.6 of 1995 that regulates the freedom of press, provides for the media council, establishes
a national institute of journalists of Uganda (NIJU) and repeals the Newspaper Publication
and the Press Censorship Act. The Statute sets minimum standards for a journalist at a
bachelors degree.
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5.0 Representations
Associations exist to bring together people with similar interests. They encourage
professional exchange of ideas, and forge unity among members. In Uganda there are a
handful of associations connected with publishing activities. For this review they include:
Uganda Writers Association, Uganda Printers Association, Uganda Publishers Association,
Uganda Booksellers Association and Uganda Library Association. No study has ever been
conducted to review how successful these are in promoting the ideals for which they were
formed to serve.
5.1 National Book Trust of Uganda
The National Book Trust of Uganda (NABOTU) was formed in 1997 to promote unity among
publishers and booksellers. NABOTU is a civil society initiative set up to promote reading
and books. It brings together all stakeholders in the book industry, government, non-
governmental organisations, and the International Development support Organisations. It
aims to work with similar organisations in the region to create a literary society. NABOTU
has been organising since 1997 successful book weeks. One of its spectacular features is the
childrens Reading Tent, a framework for taking books closer to children. In recent times
NABOTU is very active in promoting activities relating to reading and publishing. It has
projects including PALM AFRICA on its plan of activities. Leadership of this organisation
is an important factor.
5.2 Book Development Council
Uganda has made progress towards the formation of the Book Development Council. In a
national book sector workshop held in May 1997, Interim Book Development Council was
formed. It comprises of Associations of publishers, booksellers, writers, printers, librarians
and users of the books, the Government Ministries whose activity have a bearing on books;
UNESCO Uganda, NGOs. The Council co-ordinates book sector activities such as book
promotion, book sector surveys, training and regulation are some of its activities. It is not
active at the moment.
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6.0 Publishing Opportunities
A summary of various research ndings indicates that Uganda publishing industry offers
wide-ranging opportunities. Education in Uganda is an area of concern to publishers,
because book publishing is textbook dominated and skewed heavily towards primary school
books. In estimation around 60 75% of all books published in Uganda are textbooks mainly
primary. This leaves a gap for books in other elds like culture, religion etc. Publishing for
distance education, University level texts, books for technical education and others in local
languages provide new challenges and opportunities for investment in Uganda.
During the 1990s, the environment for publishing in Uganda has seen a number of
improvements. Ugandans are enjoying an enabling political environment. There is no
more state monopoly on textbook publishing. Ease with which to access foreign exchange
and improvements in information communication technology have contributed to a more
conducive publishing environment. Liberalisation of the economy has lessened difculties
of accessing printing materials and equipment. Universal primary education (UPE) and
universal secondary education (USE) have created a lasting demand for more books and
there are general improvements in terms of school enrolments at all levels.
Publishing is reaching a level of quality and quantity, which is a sufcient base for growth.
The status of publishing is going up or better. There is a younger generation of men and
women publishers with entrepreneur skills and international connections. Fountain
Publishers and M.K. are some examples. Co-publishing is creating new partnerships.
6.1 Economic Opportunities
An economy of a country or a sector within it can be judged using two management formulae,
the SWOT analysis. Politically Ugandas economy has been transformed by putting in
place enabling atmosphere and law. Security has improved, press freedom is guaranteed,
liberalisation of the economy has provided opportunities for enterprising publishers.
Textbook policy is in place. Uniform vetting of textbooks for schools has levelled ground
for the book trade and introduced competition. Monopoly of state in publishing has been
scrapped. Private companies both local and international now compete freely. Tendering
procedure has become more transparent.
The Ministry of Education and Sports approves syllabi and lists of books for primary,
secondary, and teacher education and allows schools to select their own books. It pays
directly for books for primary education. Books for secondary education are still a niche
area for investment. Books for secondary schools are charged on students who either bring
their own textbooks, or they are levied a library fee or both for schools to be able to get
books. Government is currently working out a new model for supplying school textbooks
42
to support its Universal Secondary Education. Books for tertiary institutions are a potential
area for investors. Currently most of them are coming from foreign publishers. Uganda
publishers are brazing for the regional market. There are investment opportunities in
Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Southern Sudan.
6.3 Cultural Opportunities
Ugandas political climate is stable and is enabling local and international publishers to take
opportunities. Increasing enrolment at all levels of education is an opportunity which needs
to be exploited expeditiously. Expansion of syllabi and introduction of new subjects to the
schools curricula is creating more opportunities. New technology especially communication
technology is helping publishers exchange ideas, with colleagues locally and internationally,
manuscripts complete with illustrations can now be sent for editing through e-mail and
returned same way. These are new opportunities. Use of DTPs has more than doubled
within the decade. Availability of Internet services/facilities has promoted reading abroad
of local literature. Publishers and organisations alike have created websites for promoting
local information thus cutting barriers of time. What is important in this development is
that publishers are now engaged in using information technology. Some publishing houses
in the country have now gone to the extent of transforming their publishing activities by
operating both print and electronic copies. The entry of e-publishing is a promising indicator
in a good direction because it is a model that is also entering library spaces as a response. It
is also creating a development where equity of information sharing is coming in. Libraries
like Makerere, Kyambogo, Uganda Martyrs University, and Uganda Christian University
Libraries are increasing the range of their e-resources in tandem with the developments in
publishing industry. There are benets out of this. First users have to learn to use ICT, second
they have to understand techniques of using search engines and thirdly, they can access
information even outside the library premises or elsewhere convenient. This element of
accessing information outside the library is a method of democratising information access.
Whereas these opportunities exist little has been done to cover some gaps. Even if it were
done, the scenario of accessing learning materials would mostly favour those who are better
disposed to purchase them. This would still leave a gap to equal access to these materials.
This means looking for alternative, efcient and effective means to ll the gap. This is
precisely why PALM project is seeking for ideas that should lead to developing a newer
model for providing learning materials. This review is one small contribution to that aim.
6.4 Challenges to publishing in Uganda
Although there is a market for information products especially books, the overall market is
small. For instance that almost 32 percent of Ugandans have nothing to do with publishing
due to non-literacy. Literacy is 68 percent for males and 61 percent for women. Another
18 percent of literates have limited access to published materials due to poverty. Absence
43
of suitable published material in languages they know and poor distribution systems make
the problem mightier. In effect this means a small local market. The answer probably would
be getting a model that would make it easy for people to access information cheaply. For
example a model would be developed that allows materials to be placed on the Internet.
People access it freely and where there is need to own a copy, advice would be given to
contact the publisher for a copy. I think it would work.
The challenges of the publishing industry in Uganda are most importantly of an economic
nature. Uganda is one of the poorest countries of the world. Per capita incomes stood at
$350 in 2006 against US $500 on average in an African continent. Buying of newspapers
and books magazines is concentrated only in urban areas and among a few able people.
Indigenous publishing houses are under capitalised. Taxes on printing inputs remain a
problem. Taxes and poor costing of project especially books makes imported ones cheaper.
I would imagine that the proposal made above would bypass the printing scenario and
make information materials cheaper.
At the same time, competition with multinational publishers Longman, Macmillan and
Oxford University Press is tough business for the local publishers although this is good for
quality control. Book publishing is skewed in favour of publishers from the north who
have sufcient capital, classic publishing skills for especially materials for secondary and
higher education including university. Prices of books are higher relative to real incomes.
Markets are small because of low literacy and in foreign languages. Publishing basically is
done in English the second language and a few other local languages. Cost of education
especially secondary up to university leaves little money for books. The culture of buying
information products needs cultivation. Trading with partners is very limited indeed.
There is no overall government policy to promote publishing. It argues that what is important
is freeing the economy to all actors and let the market forces of demand and supply rule.
Only one sector Education has a textbook policy. Government has put in laws in which
every sector can compete. There are a few good publishers in the country. Although there
are managers with experience at the top level, middle level staff is still scarce. There is a
general lack of editors/translators in local languages, designers and illustrators. A large
number of books published locally need improvement in physical quality and yet they are
expensive at the same time. Publishers have acute shortage of capital. Banks are responding
very slowly to the needs of local publishers.
The main cultural problem to Ugandan publishing is also the multiplicity of languages.
Publishing is done in English and few local languages. English is the ofcial language for
administration and education. Local languages number over 50 with several dialects. The
challenge to publishing is the multiplicity of local languages. Lack of editors with skills in
44
these languages exacerbates the problem of publishing. Dominance of foreign language, low
reading habits, poorly funded libraries, poverty, low literacy levels, seeing no immediate
benets of reading by a section of society and problems of trade infrastructure especially in
rural areas offer no solutions to the majority of people in Uganda who do not have access to
published materials.
Uganda is pursuing a policy of primary education in the medium of local languages for
the rst three years. Publications in local languages are largely government initiatives
that publish newspapers in regional languages but not books for schools. With thematic
curriculum coming, indigenous languages could receive a boost. Churches do publish
some papers in local languages and for books it is religious literature but in a few languages
only.
Continued book donations in the name of cultural relations undermines writing and buying
of books. Writing of tailor-made pamphlets and binding them locally is killing book sales
of published books. Copyright abuse through unwarranted photocopying is a worrying
problem especially at tertiary or university level.
Gender inequality within the publishing industry remains. It is as historical as it is cultural.
Uganda like most African countries has in the past preferred boys more in education than
girl children. School enrolment depicts this imbalance all through education structure.
Development of a crop of women writers, editors and publishers remains an uphill task.
Poverty, illiteracy, multiplicity of local languages, and book donations, are key factors
constraining publishing of learning materials as they dampen efforts to produce more
learning materials. Imbalance in school enrolment with a bias towards boys is a radical
disadvantage to lifting the status of girl children. General scarcity of publishing skills, also
makes it difcult for publishing to produce good products. It is the view here that had
production and distribution of learning materials been easy, and cheaper people would
be inuenced to attend to school and adult classes. Whereas PALM is not expected to be
the panacea of the problems of publishing it is indeed an idea worth exploring because
publication of learning materials has been known to be problematic in its present state. It is
against these difculties that ideas are building to look for alternative ways of solving the
learning materials equation.
45
7.0 Printing Industry
The simplest denition of printing is that it is a process and a method of making an impression
on a surface such as a sheet of paper. While that denition is acceptable, printing should
be understood as the entire process of producing an information product which ends with
making available, copies of product like a book. Besides being a process, printing shall be
given a wider connotation as that branch of industry from which we get products that are
nearly designed to communicate, to instil a meaning to the users mind.
7.1 Printing as a process and as an industry
Books as agents of education, literacy, leisure and information have to be manufactured and
doing that involves a process of designing, printing and binding. It is the process whereby
a typescript is transformed into a nished book. In book publishing, each printed work or
book is a challenge, a new job and a different task even if it were a mere reprint. Production
therefore becomes a creative function and as such a great amount of care is necessary at each
step to ensure that the end product is pleasant to look at, is of right proportions and is best
suited to the needs of the user. Technically, this process involves a considerable amount of
liaison with authors/editors, block makers/typesetters, materials suppliers and with the
promotion and sales people. All these require foresight, planning, clear thinking and quick
decisions so that the format, cost, quality proceed according to plan and schedule. Like the
car industry, printing industry is a union of different departments specializing in various
aspects of the trade but each contributing to the nal product as required. Some of the
departments are inks, paper, plate, foundry, glues, thread manufacturers, but broadly put
together, they come under two basic departments - printing and binding.
7.2 Nature and size of printing industry in Uganda
The most useful method of gauging the nature and sizes of printing presses or rms is by
taking an inspection of all of them. Failing in that approach, statistical information regarding
all the aspects of the industry should reveal the kind of facilities available. For the case of
Uganda, both approaches are not possible. In the rst place, owners are wary of showing
their machinery to outsiders for reasons of secrecy and fear of competition and secondly
there is no statistical information published anywhere about this subject regarding Ugandas
state of the industry. However, a general guess of what rms sizes are can be revealed from
products they issue. Through observation and experience the printing industry in Uganda
is divided into the following major divisions - general printers, newspapers, stationers
and packaging printers. The general printing rms are those which deal with a range of
activities such as books, magazines, business literature such as accounts and receipt books.
The newspaper, packaging and stationery printers maintain their lines of specialization.
46
In a review of the Ugandas printing industry 2000-2005, Katigo (2006) established that
many rms were small. And to qualify the word small, I use Curwens scale with some
modication. Curwen, breaks down the size of the rms in terms of people in employment.
In this breakdown, the results of the respondents show that 60% of the rms were employing
less than 50 people each. In fact the majority of the small ones had less than 10 people each
in their establishments. About 20% employed up to 100 people each with a maximum of 400
people for the big establishments. However, the exact number of people in employment can
not be fully ascertained because some rms never responded to the study request, others
could not be reached and further still, some of them could not be located but said to exist.
But it is sufcient to state here that people in employment in the printing industry is small.
One other issue which the survey revealed was that the distribution of rms was grossly
uneven. The highest concentration is in Kampala, the capital region which is the central
region and yet the entire northern region of the country, constituting nearly one third of
the country has only two functional book printing presses. This concentration of presses
in the capital region is not an unhistorical accident but rather a historical result of elitist
population converging in the place for employment. Consequently, they have concentrated
here to serve that population.
The size and locations of rms alone cannot show how able they are in meeting the countrys
requirements. There could be many rms but not fully productive or there could be a few
rms but fully operational. But in general there is enormous growth in Ugandas printing
industry. Mere numbers of employees cannot actually reveal the kind of printing processes
or complexity of the rms. For example, many rms employ up to 50 people each but a
majority of them are hand compositors and other supporting staff. Data available at the
Uganda Bureau of Standards (UBOS) indicates that Ugandas printing industry directly
employs 7,000 people in over 380 companies (Balimwikungu 2008:41). But there are many
more people directly and indirectly employed in the local printing industry. The same
statistics further indicate that of the 380 companies, 275 are based in Kampala with 199
employing between ve to nine people. Only ve companies are employing more than
100 people. And indeed to state that many were hand compositors, shows that letterpress
method of printing is widely used. Its wide application is due to the fact that offset method
was sometimes bedevilled with shortages or extremely high cost of printing plates and
lms.
Despite the problems of materials, the use of offset method of printing is getting widespread
and the introduction of modern methods of typesetting has helped improve the situation in
some rms such as newspaper presses like the New Vision and the Monitor publications and
Government Printer.
47
Despite the issues mentioned above, the printing industry has been growing over the past
decade. This is partially as a result of government efforts to attract investors in the country
and also promoting the local ones. One of the efforts in place is the liberalisation of the
economy in which Investment Code has given investors incentives to repatriate their prots.
Investment incentives in the form of Investment Guarantees are provided for under the
Income Tax Act of 1997. An investor in the printing industry can apply for the tax incentives.
Uganda is a member of Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) of the World
Bank and VAT differed payment Agreements. This membership means that the investment
security guarantees are backed by an international framework and ensures that government
will not fall back on its commitment to an investor.
Other policies government has put in place that affect printing like other businesses are:
privatisation, lowering tariffs and non tariff barriers to regional trade which has facilitated
cross border trade, foreign exchange market freedom, keeping down ination to manageable
rates in order to create stability in prices and encouraging growth through the private sector
investment.
Briey it can be said that todays printing industry is in a state of transition. It has become an
industry that no longer relies solely on print for sustainability. The printers and print services
providers are incorporating different strategies into their business models to provide different
types of services that consumers now require for achieving their business goals. For instance
four distinct services and products are realised as products of the print industry. These are:
design and pre-press services (computer graphic design, hand art design, lm processing,
screen print design, colour separation and aluminium plate processing); printing (products:
magazines, newspapers, brochures, business documents like receipt books and invoices,
ofce stationery, visitors cards, advertising, production of posters, billboards (PVC vinyl)
manuals, books, labels and stickers); nishing (folding, cutting, gluing, perforation, glazing,
polishing and sealing).
It can be said that printing industry is one of the most technologically responsive industries.
The introduction of the Internet, computerised designing and digital presses has improved
performance of the industry. This has meant deskilling trend in composing, plate making
and pressroom operations. This has meant taking on new type of workers with skills in IT
operations and generally higher education levels.
The problems Uganda printers are facing according to Katigos study include client grabbing
by the bigger printers, acquiring permits for foreign workers, corruption from managers from
big organisations that need kickbacks and delayed payments, seasonal nature of business
and shortage of skilled human resources. It is felt the industry does not have printers with
a level of knowledge and skills exactly needed.
48
With printing technology changing the world over, printing houses have to train their
employees. Whereas the big rms take employees to Germany, most printing houses now
utilise the printing course at Kyambogo University which offers printing technology course
at certicate level. As a result of this quality has improved because those who attain the
training pass on the knowledge to counterparts. But even with this course there is a problem
of lack of trainers and machines adequate enough to sustain a vibrant training programme
at the university. And of course given the printing loads available, investments in print-on-
demand facilities are still a long way away.
7.3 Binding
Binderies in the country fall under two categories: institutional binderies in places such as
University Libraries, Presidents Ofce and the others are printers binderies. While the
former have been established to carry out book repairs, periodical and/or document binding,
the latter are commercial binderies equipped with machinery for initial bookbinding. To
date, there is no distinct plant which is wholly established for that purpose. Those that exist
are part of the printers establishment. An examination of the kinds of binding techniques
reveals that stapling, perfect and sewn but paper cover binding are in use. The process of
case or edition binding had not been started due to its expensive nature. Here it is stated that
while thousands of books are used, book life is often short meriting rebinding. There are no
binderies to cater for school books. This means a high mortality rate and replacement. For
purposes of this PALM AFRICA project this weakness could be turned into an opportunity
by having materials on the Internet where there would be no rebinding costs except website
maintenance costs.
7.4 Production Capacity
Most rms fall under private sector and are operating as individual entities. Those that
fall under public sector i.e. Government Printer, Prisons Press, Defence Press, New Vision,
Lands and Surveys, operate directly under the patronage of their ministries. To get an
accurate assessment of the volume of their output requires support of statistics. Again there
are none publicly available. However, two pictures can be painted - one from small rms
and the other from big rms.
The small rms visited showed a tendency of inating gures which in my view were
completely unrealistic. The big rms can not reveal their correct gures. Low gures are
quoted but on asking the authors of their books print-runs, another set of gures, usually
higher, are often given. This leads to the conclusion that fear of revealing correct gures
is tied to the fear of taxation as was the case for big rms. On the other hand small rms
overstate their gures for the sake of false pride, marketing, and recognition. However,
failing on statistics is no total excuse to the problem. The researcher can fairly say that the
output is low in terms of quantity if paired to the existing needs in the country.
49
7.5 Printing and Ancillary Industry
... just bring up the supplies, Rudyard Kipling.
That statement summarises what role ancillary industry plays in printing. It is because the
products of the printing industry have increased enormously in quantity and variety these
days, so has the manufacture and supply of materials and equipment for the printer.
Printers need type founders, ink manufacturers, paper makers, lm and plate makers,
computers and their accessories etc, for the supply of their products. While in developed
countries such as Britain, all these inputs could be manufactured within the country, in
Uganda, all are imported from overseas. Against small capital, whatever becomes available
is but insufcient. Paper for example, plays a leading role that before a printer accepts any
job, he must be sure this item is available in stock. This is one of the elements that printers
use as excuse to cost their printing jobs higher than normal. It explains why publishers in
Uganda normally send their les to Arab or Asian countries for printing. When printed out
there, the costs of printing, packing, insurance plus transportation by air to Uganda are still
lower than if the work were printed in Uganda. It is only newspapers that enjoy the benets
of larger print runs in which unit cost drops dramatically to fairly acceptable market level.
7.6 Printers and Publishers
The relationship between printers and book publishers centre on the ability of the printer
to do the latters job satisfactorily. This means the printers must have the capacity to do a
good job. All that publishers need is a concrete assurance usually through a contract that
printers will complete the job well and on schedule as specied in the contract. As far as the
situation obtains in Uganda, printers and publishers have many times been unhappy about
each others attitudes. Publishers have sometimes found themselves accusing printers
for delaying to deliver the nal products or doing the job unsatisfactorily. Printers on the
other hand, have blamed delays on shortages of materials such as paper, power failures
and sometimes the competent staff being on leave. At one end of the scale, authors become
impatient though the problem of scarcity of materials has been addressed. Government
liberalised the economy and required inputs to the printing industry are available in the
country. Also, more printers, especially foreign ones have also joined and opened printing
establishments in Kampala especially. But generally stated and despite those problems,
there is sufcient capacity to do the printing work in Uganda. All that is needed is good
organisation and management of resources - both human and material.
Though printing has been in use for over 80 years, its development in the country
has been hampered by a number of factors. The most serious being cost of materials,
inadequate skilled manpower in numbers capable of managing the entire industry, old and
uneconomic machines which often breakdown without facilities for quick repairs. Despite
the shortcomings, modern facilities are becoming widely available but the volume of work
50
available to them is still low. Governments readiness to help should eventually redress the
problems ailing the industry.
51
8.0 Book Procurement and Distribution in Uganda
Books are tools of education and instruments of knowledge and as such book publishing has
a social role to play apart from being an entrepreneurial venture. To full those functions,
the publishers have to make sure books and other information products reach the widest
possible audience. This is the essence of marketing and distribution.
Marketing is the overall function which takes the book to the reader and involves all
other functions namely: promotion and publicity, actual selling, market research and
merchandising and distribution. To market books, one must know books as individual items,
the customers, the channels of reaching them and methods of inuencing people to buy
books. On the other hand, distribution is a process which involves planning, implementing
and controlling the physical ows of materials from the points of origin to the points of use
to meet customer needs at a prot. In book publishing, this means the physical movement
of books from publishers warehouses to the distribution channels and ultimately to the
buyers, using the most convenient, cheap and fast means. Both marketing and distribution
are the two functions that any publisher uses to full his duties. Failure to do that means all
efforts and money spent to create books become a liability.
In a broader context, book distribution involves procurement, consolidation and delivery
of books to the end user. For this review, I differentiate book procurement from book
distribution. Book distribution, like book procurement is a part of a chain of activities in
the publishing industry. Book distribution activities are centred on selection, warehousing,
consolidation, transportation and delivery to the end user whereas procurement looks
at the sources of funding government, parents, local authority and how such funding
is distributed or used in acquisition of books. Procurement focuses on acquisition of
instructional materials, and other aspects like funding, vetting of materials to be purchased
and consolidation are of great importance.

In the context of this review, this section describes how marketing and book distribution
is carried out in Uganda. This begins with some history. History is important because
looking back over it helps to look into the future. From it we gain knowledge of events and
tendencies which help explain what is really going on today and what may likely happen
in the future.
The exact year when marketing and distribution of books began in Uganda, is hard to
tell. What is certain is that with the coming of missionaries and later on by the colonial
administration, books came as the necessary tools of education and literacy. So, it can be
safely said that the beginnings of marketing and distribution is tied with the development
of education. The bulk of bookselling to Africans was done through missions who had not
52
only their own bookshops, but also acted as wholesale distributors to a large number of
small traders and mission stations. Besides static bookshops, there was a mobile bookshop
service under the charge of European missionary. This was the case for Church Missionary
Society in book selling. In the commercial sector, book selling was already functioning.
Bookshops were managed by Europeans, Asians and Africans. These bookshops acted both
as wholesale as well as retail outlets for books.
The East African Literature Bureau followed the work of missionaries and colonial
administration in bookselling. Its terms of reference in bookselling precluded competition
with the existing channels of marketing and distribution. The Bureau distributed its books
largely through the trade - i.e. missionary establishments and commercial sectors. The
Bureau also sold its books through welfare (or Community Development) Ofcers. In its
report, 1950, the Bureau reported that sale of its books at all places they appeared was fairly
steady, but the number of places in relation to the size of the territory was inadequate. It was
therefore, found t for the Bureau to take an active part in book marketing and distribution.
To put this into effect, the Bureau in 1952 agreed that its greatest contribution would be in
the eld of promotion of bookselling trade among the small shopkeepers over the widest
possible area. Its Advisory Council at its meeting in 1951 had approved a limited publishing
programme so as to direct efforts towards book promotion.
Consolidating on existing channels and creating many more, the Bureaus points of sale
increased to 84 against about half the earlier total. Its sales also increased from 88,000
volumes during 1948-1950 to 113,000 during 1951, representing an increase of 28.4%.
Besides using the existing channels, the Bureau developed a mailing list containing addresses
to which, on publication of a new book, a Book News Sheet was sent giving details of the new
publications and price. An order form was attached. The Bureau was able to maintain its
links with the established book trade for a longer period to come.
Up until 1962, book marketing and distribution developed enormously due to increased
literacy, expansion of educational programmes, stable economy, and one unit of currency
used in the whole of East Africa. There was mobility of books from one country to another
without serious hitches.
At the attainment of political independence in 1962, book marketing and distribution
continued to do well. There existed wholesalers and many retailers up to the remotest
parts of the country. There was a mobile book service by Uganda Bookshop, and village
traders carried books to the village markets as part of their merchandise. The rising literacy
levels were a manifestation of the promising publishing industry with an effective book
procurement method.
53
But a few years into independence, the entire publishing industry had been altered. State
centralism that had swept over textbook supply in Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi and Ghana did
not spare Uganda (Read, Denning and Bontoux 2001:25). Uganda Publishing House, Uganda
Press Trust and Uganda School Supply all the subsidiaries of Milton Obote Foundation
were created to manage book work in the country. With the fall of Obote government in
1971 Uganda School Suppliers like the Uganda Publishing House faced a downward trend
without recourse to the private sector. Amins government lasted up to 1979 when his regime
fell and Obote became the president for the second time. Again an attempt to re-establish
the Uganda School Supplies (Matovu & Read, 2001:114) was made. All distribution and
school supply once again became the monopoly of Uganda School Supplies. With the fall of
Obotes second regime in mid 1985, again the textbook distribution did not revert to the local
private sector. Government learnt a lesson since it was under pressure to solve the problem
of lack of reading materials in schools. It made a radical step of tendering for primary school
textbook supplies to international suppliers since no other company could do in Uganda.
Since then the state has been involved in procurement, consolidation and distribution of
textbooks without the involvement of the private sector booksellers and distributors. For
example the advent of the USAID Support for Uganda Primary Education Reform (SUPER)
project created a system that initially consolidated and distributed the procured primary
school textbooks within the Ministry of Education and Sports.
Because of the upheavals and the ongoing wars in Uganda since 1966 the book procurement
system has been in state of disruption all the time forcing the state to play a major role in
procurement of textbooks, and relying more on donor funding. For example since 1983,
funding agencies have been providing most of the funds for teaching and learning materials
for primary schools in Uganda. Some of the agencies are: The World Bank through four IDA
projects education III, IV, V and Northern Uganda Reconstruction Project; and USAID via
the SUPER project.
Under IDA III 1985-1987 and IDA IV 1989 there was a major provision of textbooks to
primary schools. The IDA III and IV spent over 16 million dollars on consolidation and
shipment. The total number of books, which were provided under those two programmes,
was 8 million textbooks and one million teachers guides (Irura, 1993:1.5). When Education
III project was implemented in the mid 1980s, the textbook procurement, consolidation and
distribution contract was awarded to a UK company - JMLS because there was no local
competent company to handle the exercise. Uganda School Supplies a sister company to
Uganda Publishing House, which could have handled the exercise, was in a serious debt
crisis and indeed it closed down shortly after. Since then the state continued to procure,
consolidate and distribute textbooks without involvement of the private sector booksellers
and distributors (Matovu & Read, 2001:119).
54
Though the governments good intention was to ll the gap, it culminated into the usurping
the role of the private commercial sector. Irura (1993:1.4) stated that the governments
involvement in textbook publishing and distribution is attributed to the economic
upheavals.
The Uganda economy took a downward trend after 1972 when Idi Amin
chased foreign investors from the country. This had the effect of destroying
the capacity to produce books and diminishing the reading habits (Irura,
1993:1.4).
He adds
Lack of adequate funds to purchase the books for education also oriented the
government to come up with policy decisions which have been inimical to the
development of the book sector. Some of the decisions were taken with good
intentions to minimize costs and rationalize distribution of schoolbooks in
view of the economic situation. Yet it was not appreciated that such decision
would undermine the book sector in the country. Such decisions include:
governments involvement in school book production, the connement of
school book distribution to one parastatal company (Irura, 1993:1.8).
According to Matovu & Read (2001:112), the government of Uganda has since then been
procuring primary school textbooks though the Instructional Materials Unit (IMU) of the
Ministry of Education and Sports. The IMU was established in 1993 within the Ministry of
Education and Sports as a specialist procurement agency to procure and distribute textbooks,
supplementary reading materials and teaching aids to all primary schools in Uganda. Funds
have been coming from the World Bank and USAID.
Its mission is to coordinate activities towards the acquisition, procurement and dispatch
of instructional materials. The key functions of IMU are: to coordinate the procurement of
instructional materials in the Ministry of Education, planning for the consolidation, storage
and distribution of centrally procured instructional materials to districts and schools,
monitoring and evaluation of instructional materials delivered in schools under centralised
and decentralised procurement, regular reviewing of instructional materials policy, training
and dissemination of information to schools on effective usage and storage of instructional
materials, and implementing the stated policy on instructional materials. The functions of
this Unit cut across other departments in the Ministry and the Unit works closely with the
rest of the departments to achieve the smooth and timely implementation of instructional
materials procurement and distribution. Other departments that IMU works closely
with are the Pre primary and primary education, Education planning department, teacher
education, education standards agency and Curriculum development.
As a procurement agency, IMU was required to support and develop a fully competitive,
market oriented, textbook system in Uganda based on the provision of school based
55
purchasing power (consumer funding) to every primary school in the country and the
introduction of school responsibility for the selection of their textbooks (Matovu & Read,
2001:112)
From its establishment in 1993 up to 2000, IMU had purchased approximately US$ 30
million worth of textbooks from locally established publishers (Matovu & Read, 2001:112).
Between 1995 and 1999, the IMU had undertaken ve major material procurements and
four of these were concerned solely with core textbooks and teachers guides, not including
the supplementary readers and teaching aids, all approved by the Ministry of Education
and Sports. Whereas US$ 47.5 million were to be spent from 2001 to 2004, US$ 5.8 million
(shs. 11 billion) of this was spent on SUPER VIII whereas US$8.5 million (shs. 16 billion)
is already earmarked for the procurement of textbooks under SUPER IX (Ahimbisibwe,
2003:29).
Funding for primary school textbooks comes from two main sources; the textbook
procurement budgets of the Instructional Materials Unit (IMU) and UPE funds provided
under capitation grants directly to schools for school based spending on other teaching and
learning materials (Matovu & Read, 2001:107). For example for the period 2000-2003 US$ 60
million was allocated to teaching and learning materials.
Procurement of primary school textbooks has been supported with donor funding, for
example the World Bank provided funds for IDA III and IDA IV projects to purchase,
consolidate and transport books from Hong Kong to Uganda (Irura, 1993:10). Since 1998, six
agencies (The World Bank, the European Union, DFID, USAID, DGIS and Irish Government)
have combined via the Education Strategy Investment Plan (ESIP) to provide budgetary
support for education, which also includes nancial support for materials provision (Matovu
& Read, 2001:112).
8.1 Centralised Procurement and Distribution
There are about 250 bookshops spread across the country. In those areas where they are
present, they are not fully stocked. This partly explains why stationery has been added to the
stocks. Non-conventional channel is used here to mean selling or distributing books through
outlets that do not form part of the normal book trade structure. They are nonetheless
important. These are the Pavement Booksellers and hawkers. Both these avenues are useful to
the public because books are brought nearer to the people and their prices are negotiable.
Books sold by pavement booksellers are both old and new. The bad aspect of them is that
quite often school textbooks and library books are seen sold by them. Though hawking is a
tedious exercise, some people prefer to spend their time that way. This is tangible around
bus and taxi parks at peak hours of the day.
56
The bookshop channel would constitute what is termed decentralized textbook distribution.
The distribution chain is not restricted to the central government. The second category the
non-conventional method constitutes such practices whereby the outlets do not conform
to the prescribed channels of book trade-publisher-distributor-bookseller and end-user
relationship. Centralized system of procurement is where the publisher sells direct to the
Ministry of Education the end user.
8.2 Decentralised Procurement and Distribution
Decentralized procurement and distribution of primary school textbooks, is that conventional
channel that completes the book distribution chain. It relies heavily on the nationwide
network of bookselling points. The publisher sells the books to the distributor or bookshop.
In case of government procurement, the concerned government agencies buy from the
distributors or bookshops in a particular region rather than procuring centrally from the
publishers.
Some attempts towards revitalization of decentralized procurement and distribution of
primary school textbooks are exhibited in the usage of UPE funds. The funds are sent to
the district for appropriate use in support of education sector. The funds could be spent
on textbooks. However the book distributors and sellers at district level are still losing
out. Since there are simply too few good, well-stocked, professional and credit worthy
booksellers in the districts, the publishers end up supplying directly to the districts, once
again by passing the ideal distribution chain characteristic of decentralized distribution
(Matovu & Read, 2001:123).
Another attempt to revitalize private sector involvement in procurement and distribution -
thus decentralized system, was in 1999. In 1999 and 2002, IMU put the textbook consolidation
to a local tender. However, the contracts were not awarded to local booksellers or distributors
but instead were awarded to Kamalu, a local publisher and agent of Longman; and Mukono
Bookshop, a local publisher, bookseller and agent of Macmillan respectively. Both these
Ugandan companies that won the contracts to consolidate and distribute instructional
materials procured centrally by IMU, are agents of multi-national publishers thus hardly
giving the local booksellers a chance to participate and get the relevant experience and
management systems to support a strong national book distribution chain required for
decentralized procurement system.
There was a poor network of bookshop distribution countrywide to support a decentralized
system of procurement and distribution. To build capacity required for the decentralized
distribution, 4 districts were chosen as pilot districts for decentralized procurement during
SUPER VIII and IX. The pilot project aimed at creating an opportunity for local booksellers
to be involved and assist in improving standards (Matovu & Read: 126).
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8.2.1 Decentralised Instructional Materials Procurement Pilot Project (DIMPPP)
From the ndings of the research carried out, it is observed that the respondents were
knowledgeable about the Decentralised Instructional Materials Procurement System. The
majority attained knowledge about DIMPPP through district ofcials such as District
Education Ofcers (DEOs), District Inspectors of Schools (DIS). Others came to know
about it through head teachers, Centre Coordinating Tutors (CCTs) and Ofcial Textbook
Suppliers (OTS).
In consolidating the two systems of procurement, it was found out that the majority booksellers
were in favour of the decentralized instructional materials procurement system. Smaller
percentage opted for continued centralised procurement. This implies that decentralized
system had better prospects than centralized system of procuring instructional materials
for primary schools. It was also reported that decentralized procurement system brought
services closer to the end user. It enables schools to effectively select their own instructional
materials using the scarce resources availed to them. The other advantage of decentralized
procurement system was the correction of errors in the supplies within the local area than
far away from Kampala. In case of any shortages, the Ofcial Textbook Suppliers (OTS)
would quickly address the errors.
The study found out that centralized instructional materials procurement is too time
consuming, expensive and inconvenient to the end user. The study also identied salient
features that make decentralized system, the preferred option. Decentralized procurements
are cheaper, as reected in the discount given to schools and free transportation of materials
up to the schools. And teachers participate in making selections. The discount was given in
form of extra textbooks supplied. The decentralized system is more convenient and liked by
the majority because it involves most stakeholders as players in the distribution chain.
Information from key informants the publishers, booksellers and Ministry of Education
ofcials indicated a preference for a decentralized system because it would help in building
capacity for a national book distribution network based on bookshops. Another reason
advanced by key informants was the stability and effectiveness of a book distribution chain.
The majority argued that a stable and effective book distribution chain encouraged the
growth of the publishing industry. For example, according to ofcials from Ministry of
Education and Sports; a healthy publishing industry with effective book distribution fosters
a reading culture. A reading culture is the basis for a literate society that is the primary goal
of the Ministry.
8.2.2 Players in the decentralised procurement system
The Chief Administrative Ofcer (CAO), District Planner, Chairperson LC V, Secretary
for Education LC V, District Education Ofcers (DEO), District Inspector of Schools (DIS),
58
Principal of Primary Teachers College (PTC), Chairperson Head-teachers Association. These
formed the District Instructional Materials Steering Committee (DIMSC) of the decentralised
procurement of learning materials. At the school level, key players include: Head-teachers,
Deputy Head-teachers, Heads of Subject Departments, a representative of Parents Teachers
Association, a representative of School Management Committees and Librarians. These
formed the School Textbook and Instructional Materials Committee (STIMC).
The players both at district and school level listed above played different roles under the
decentralized system. Their roles were dependent on the ofces held and the type of services
normally rendered. Training on book selection was carried out by District Inspector of
Schools, ofcials from Instructional Materials Unit, Head-teachers, Centre Coordinating
Tutors and Ofcial Textbook Suppliers. The Ofcial Textbooks Suppliers (OTS), apart from
soliciting for business (making orders) also provided training.
8.2.3 Challenges to the Decentralised Procurement System
Delay in deliveries, lack of variety, inadequate copies and corruption were cited as key
constraints to the implementation of decentralised procurement system. The majority
of the head-teachers or teacher respondents reported a problem of delay in deliveries
(materials). This analysis by respondents was limited to Decentralized Instructional
Materials Procurement Pilot Project (DIMPPP) but not Decentralised System as such. The
DIMPPP had a time limit within which the implementation was expected. For example the
DIMPPP was supposed to run approximately for one year starting from September 2001
when schools were to receive training, order forms and their Local Purchase Orders (LPO),
and March 2002 when the textbook orders were to be delivered to schools (Management
Handbook for Schools and Districts 2001:8).
The delay in deliveries was caused by the delay in approving the books to be used in
primary school under SUPER VIII project. In the course of Ministry of Education and
Sports approving recommended textbooks and awarding contracts to publishers to supply
textbooks to primary schools both under decentralized and centralized systems, there were
irregularities and controversies that bogged down the process and subsequently caused
a delay in the deliveries. Some publishes, whose books were not included on the list of
approved textbooks for use in primary schools, contested the results and appealed to
the Inspector General of Government (IGG). By the time the IGG intervened and made
recommendations, the scheduled implementation timetable for DIMPPP had been altered
thus the years delay of deliveries.
Another constraint cited during the study was lack of variety of teaching materials and
inadequate copies. This was not a problem of Decentralised System per se but a problem
that cuts across procurement of primary school textbooks. Each primary school is allocated
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a certain amount of funds depending on the numbers of pupils, and schools have to choose
from the approved titles by Ministry of Education and Sports. For each subject, there are
only three approved publishers and the schools are expected to buy from those and no
more, thus limitation in the variety of titles. Secondly the money allocated to schools cannot
enable them buy adequate copies for each course and hence the constraint of inadequate.
According to the district ofcials the challenges of a decentralized system are identication of
the Ofcial Textbooks Suppliers (OTSs), documentation and verication of deliveries. In the
entire Rakai District for instance, there was not a single fully-edged bookshop. Stationery
and grocery were sold to supplement the bookshop business. So it is really difcult to
identify a bookshop that meets the requirements expected of an OTS under a decentralized
system. Documentation was also identied as a challenge to most of the stakeholders of
the decentralized system. Proper record keeping is expected of all the stakeholders and
they were yet to master the science of documentation. For example errors in ling the
Local Purchase Orders and misling some documents accounted for some delays in the
implementation of decentralized system. Verication of deliveries is also a challenge to
District Ofcials as they have to traverse the district ascertaining that accurate deliveries
were made to individual schools.
The information from key informants - the publishers and OTSs indicate a problem of delayed
payments. The publishers who supplied textbooks both under the centralized system and
decentralized system noted that payments under centralized system were much faster than
the decentralized system. For OTSs, high transport costs, movements to schools throughout
the district and the absence of some head-teachers at their workstations schools, at the
time of delivery were the major challenges.
8.2.4 Role of Districts in Procurement
Tibaijuka (2003) established the following roles played by the districts in the procurement
of instructional materials:
The distribution of lists of approved textbooks and LPOs to schools.
Training. The DEO, DIS trained teachers, school heads and School Management
Committees about the objectives, procedures and requirements of the decentralized
system of procuring instructional materials.
Cross-checking documents, verication of deliveries and
Undertaking the payment process.
Tibaijuka noted that the district assisted in transportation of primary school textbooks
especially those procured using UPE funds but schools also contributed to transportation of
materials procured using UPE funds.
However, with procurement under the decentralized system, it was noticed that booksellers
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to a large extent meet the cost of delivery to primary schools while the schools meet a smaller
percentage of the cost of transportation.
Although the bookseller meets the cost of transport to schools, it seems the majority of the
booksellers used hired transport from the district ofces. Only a few of them had their own
means of transport. This may be the case because most of the local booksellers interviewed
had less than ve years of experience in the business, an indication that they had not built
capacity.
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9.0 Copyright Law in Uganda
9.1 Introduction
In every society however great or small, industrialized or developing, there are people who
possess more than others, the natural gift of intellectual creation. Those creators must be
given some kind of protection and should as a matter of right benet from the fruits of
their labour and be able to earn their living from use of their creative efforts. This will
encourage them to create more and thus enrich the countrys store of literature, drama,
music to mention but a few but at the same time allowing some freedoms to users in some
ways. That is the basic message behind intellectual property rights of which copyright is but
one of them.
Copyright, symbolised by a symbol is a legal concept, enacted by most governments,
giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time. It is
the right to copy, but also gives the copyright holder the right to be credited for the work,
to determine who may adapt the work to other forms, who may perform the work, who
may nancially benet from it, and other, related rights. It is an intellectual property form
(unlike the patent, the trade mark, and the trade secret) applicable to any expressible form
of an idea or information that is substantive and discrete. It refers to the works of the mind
with particular focus on literary works, artistic works; scientic works which fall under
copyright protection. Blacks Law Dictionary, (1887) denes copyright as the right to literary
property as recognized and sanctioned by positive law. It is a right granted by a government
statute to the author or originator of certain literary or artistic productions but invested
for a limited period to an individual with the sole and exclusive privilege of multiplying
copies of the same and selling them. ALA Word Encyclopaedia of Library and Information
Science (1996) denes copyright as the right to own and control a work of authorship in
addition to the right to copy it, it is a unique property right that rewards authors for their
contributions and entices them to contribute to the advancement of knowledge. Similarly
Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary denes copyright as an exclusive legal right held for
a number of years to print, publish, sell, broadcast, perform, lm or record an original work
or any part of it. But generally, copyright is the restriction to multiply any written material
by any method unless with permission to do so, centred on print medium, literary and
artistic works. It is a unique property right that rewards authors for their contribution to
the eld of knowledge. Copyright is therefore something invisible, incorporated and which
exists in some corporeal, tangible object or material created by somebody. It is a law that
is essentially the exclusive right to do certain acts in relation to propertied matter; and it is
also the legal expression of the rights granted by the parliament to the creator to protect his
works against a variety of unauthorized possible users.

62
9.2 Purpose of copyright
Copyright is very vital in the proper running of the publishing industry. The functions
and basic rules of copyright are that copy right legally protects the work of an author, a
musician, an artist and a creator of any original work from copying and other forms of
violations of a produced work (Nyeko 1999). It also protects those who invest in publishing
of the said works. The aim is to stimulate creativity, protect investment and performers and
to reward those who create manufacture and distribute the product. Copyright may exist
as a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work; sound recording, lm, cinematography,
broadcast, cable or computer programme or typographical arrangements of a published
edition (Nyeko 1999:42). However the material must be in original form and skill or labour
must have gone into producing it. The author can sell, rent, give away, will or transfer
copyright as he/she wishes. Often, the author will sell his/her right to a publisher who will
pay a royalty or percentage from the sale of the work. The ownership of the subsidiary rights
would normally have been agreed in the contract between the publisher and the author. The
publisher has the right to grant subsidiary rights to someone else but the ownership of such
rights would have been agreed to in the contract between the publisher and the owner or
author.
Besides, an element of copyright is the idea of fair use. This is grounded on the idea that it
is benecial to exchange information freely. Fair use is applied mainly in libraries where
four standards are used: purpose and character of use; nature of the copyrighted work;
amount of the work being copied; effect of use on the publishers potential market. Any
misuse may lead to civil action and in some cases into criminal proceedings.
Copyright is both an economic and moral right. Copyright is important because it provides
a source of income in the form of royalties or periodic payment either through a grant of
license or otherwise (Kakooza, 1995) to the owner of the work. This has an added advantage
in that even after death of the author, his or her survivors continue to gain from this work
not as a lump sum but as the work sells in subsequent years after the death of the author.
Consequently copyright law ensures efcient dissemination of information for a long time.
When a work is published the publisher or author deposits a copy of the material in the
national depository as required by the law. An example of legal depository is national
libraries where this information is disseminated for research purposes. Kakooza in a paper
on the utility of the law on copyright (1995) says that when copyright system exists in a
country, it acts as a vital part of modern societys infrastructure due to its centrality in the
communication and dissemination of information to the public through newsprint, radios,
television and lm. Such media broadcast when protected are effective in the dissemination
of information to the public. He added that copyright brings wealth to the nation. The
wealth of a nation is demonstrated in the existence of national museums, national galleries,
to provide an attraction to tourists who in turn bring foreign exchange. This leads to a
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conclusion that if copyright laws were not there, these materials would easily be copied
and transferred out of the country thus leaving nothing home to attract tourists. Copyright
laws therefore protect material that acts as a source of income to both the individual and
the nation. He argued that if effectively administered copyright and neighbouring rights
have a social relevance and place in the promotion of education and ow of knowledge,
enhancement of scientic and technical know how. In the way it is convenient to regard
copyright not, as some have said, as a negative right to prevent other people from dealing
with an authors work, but rather as a positive right of property. The argument is that the
fruit of a persons brain is something which belongs peculiarly to a particular person.
Copyright promotes education. For instance authors sometimes produce literary material
not only for money but to contribute to learning and literature. An example to illustrate
this is that provided by Professor Sebuwufu (1998), former Vice Chancellor of Makerere
University who was quoted in the Monitor newspaper of 09/01/1998 to have advised Makerere
University lecturers to PUBLISH OR PERISH. This meant that if a lecturer did not produce
works in line with their academic eld, they risked perishing along with their knowledge.
Existence of copyright meant such works of lecturers would receive the protection of these
works which in turn mean meeting the objective of encouraging education.
Copyright also plays an important role in the promotion of culture and tradition. It is
said that a nation without cultural roots and dynamic traditions cannot have steady and
enduring development. Copyright encourages intellectual creativity and innovation and
as a general rule, the protection granted to copyright law vests in the rst instance in the
creator of the work. This is known as rst ownership or initial ownership. And denitely
there is a host of reasons why people write to be published. People for instance write to
clarify their thoughts, commitment to their professions, professional advancement and wish
to communicate with others. Furthermore people also write as a way of gaining personal
satisfaction, integral part of research, and writing as a hobby. For whatever reason they
write, the rst owner of the economic and moral rights of which copyright consists in the
rst instance is the author who created the work.
9.3 Uganda Copyright Law
It is recognized that debate and actions about copyright in the English speaking world
began with the printing press. In the case of Uganda as a former territory of Britain, work
on copyright can be traced to the work of William Caxton (1472) and later the expansion of
printing trade across many countries. It can be argued that with the invention of printing in
the fteenth century, wide opportunities for intellectual property opened and the printing
press made the reproduction of printed matter into several copies to the mass circulation
a possibility and the publishers saw the commercial aspects of printing in their favour and
tried to avoid the risk of plagiarism by those in the same trade. This means that copyright
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initially was conceived as a way for government to restrict printing. Until the middle to
the late 19
th
century, copyright was largely a domestic concern. But as the export of books
from Europe expanded and new communication technologies strongly affected these
nations, their perspectives on copyright began to shift. There was increased concern about
book piracy and these reduced publishers revenues and authors royalties were frequently
reduced considerably.
The second landmark on English copyright history is the British national copyright law that
began with England Statute of Anne (1709) and spread to other nations of Europe, before
the 19
th
century. It is not the intention of this paper to get into that detail but sketchily run
through it as a building block for its development in Uganda. This is because the national
copyright laws of countries throughout the world were concerned mainly with the protection
of the works of their countrys own nationals and denied foreign authors any protection that
copyright began to spread from Europe to Colonial Africa after the Universal Copyright
Convention of 1952. Consequently copyright got introduced into Uganda as part of the
British imperial expansion into Africa. Until 1964, Uganda was using the Copyright Act
1956 of the United Kingdom.
After Uganda gained independence, it became essential to revise this law to suit the publishing
needs of an independent country. This was done in 1964, leading to the enactment of the
Uganda Copyright Act of 1964. This Act recognized materials like literary works including
poetry, textbooks, encyclopaedias, lecture notes, artistic works like maps, etc, provided they
are from an individuals own creative effort. But later as it happened, this law fell short
of providing for the administrative and structural infrastructure for enforcing it and did
not cater for most of the subjects that needed protection for example scientic discoveries,
folklore and subsidiary rights. Other issues prompting government to revise the Act were
the emerging and widening forms of information dissemination centring on the Information
and Communication Technologies. Therefore government found it t to revise the old Act
after forty-two years of existence, to redress the new copyright challenges. And this led to a
new law the revised Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Act of 2006, Act 19.
This expanded Act repeals and replaces the 1964 Copyright Act, and provides for the
protection of literary, scientic and artistic intellectual works and the neighbouring rights.
New features in this Act are: scientic materials, neighbouring rights, contracts relating
to the exploitations of Authors rights, general provisions relating to administration of
copyright, and provisions relating to collecting societies. The new law has made elaborate
provisions regarding fair use of works protected by copyright. It contains measures to
safeguard copyright holders. It protects neighbouring rights and folklore hence the title
Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Act 2006. Neighbouring (subsidiary) rights include
rights accruing to performers of copyrighted work, broadcasters, publishers and producers.
65
Another area is the extension of the period of protection. These provisions meet current
international standards. As for infringement, there is provision for both civil and criminal
procedures, and of ne or imprisonment not exceeding four years. The new law provides
for establishment of a copyright council which should promote and encourage creativity in
artistic, literary, musical and scientic elds in Uganda, represents and defends copyright,
promotes awareness of copyright, grants licenses and generally promotes copyright and
neighbouring rights in Uganda. The new copyright law also provides for establishment
of associations for the different copyright owners like writers, publishers, performers and
others and such associations shall be standing committees of the copyright council. The new
law also provides for establishment of a copyright court.
Evidently, Uganda copyright law recognizes copyright limitations, allows fair exceptions
to the creators exclusivity of copyright, and giving users certain rights. The development
of digital media and computer network technologies has prompted reinterpretation of the
law. Accordingly, the Uganda law brings in computer programmes and programme-
carrying signals. The law denes computer programme as a set of instructions expressed
in any language, code or notation, intended to cause the device having an information
proceeding capacity to indicate, perform or achieve a particular function, task or result. The
other aspect of interpretation is, programme-carrying signals as electronically generated
carriers transmitting live or recorded material consisting of images, sounds or both images
and sounds in their original form or any form recognizably derived from the original and
emitted to or passing through a satellite situated in extra-territorial space. The spirit is to
cover the emerging technological products and processes although less efciently than the
American Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Like all other countries copyright law, Ugandan law does not cover ideas and information
themselves, only the form or manner in which they are expressed. This is because copyright
does not exist in mere ideas, but only in the particular way in which those ideas have
been expressed, whether by words or by paint on canvas, or whatever tangible form. It is
the expression in tangible form that really matters. The law also makes exceptions to the
restrictions when the work is copied for the purpose of commentary or other restrictions
such as fair use, review, and critique, news reportage, reporting court or parliamentary
proceedings and giving professional advice. But the bottom line is that a work must meet
minimum standards of originality in order to qualify for copyright, and this right expires
after a set period of 50 years after the death of its owner. Problem area where the Ugandan
law falls short is when it does not dene an author to include those in employment. In other
countries the original holder of the copyright may be the employer of the author rather than
the author himself, if the work is a work for hire. It should have been provided that if a
copyrighted work is made by an employee in the course of that employment, the copyright
work is automatically owned by the employer which would be a Work for hire.
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9.4 Copyright law and publishers
Publishers, even more than authors, seek to maximize prots. In doing so they, too are
compelled by competing priorities and variables. Maximizing prot is achieved by selling
many books at a price the market will bear as well as buying and selling rights, while
minimizing both xed costs (e.g. administration, plant) and variable costs ( e.g. printing,
distribution, payment to authors). They are also driven to improve their production
capacity by investing in new equipment that will allow for more production at a lower
per unit cost, and seek to increase their size and market share to a level that discourages
other rms from entering the publishing eld. Given these requirements, publishers are
affected by a variety of factors; including the availability of author works and the prices
they must pay for them, the size of the market and its level of saturation, the number of
other publishing rms operating in their eld, funds available for capitalization of new
equipment, and the technological capacity of their current equipment. These factors, in
turn help to determine the number of copies publishers produce each year and the average
number of copies of each volume they print. From the publishers perspective, the role of
copyright is to clarify ownership of a work by an author, and thus ensure that the proper
transfer of publication, distribution and related rights can be solved by way of contracts. It
also provides a mechanism for enforcement against infringing acts by others.
Much as the Copyright law is in place, studies conducted in Uganda reveal that not all
publishers were aware of the law. Some have heard about it but had never read it. The
impact therefore of this law on book publishing in Uganda cannot at the moment be
measured. Consequently it is difcult to establish whether it has reduced or helped increase
accessibility of information products. As Kawooya (2007) stated, for most part the debate
takes place in a vacuum devoid of empirical research on copyright in education in general
and access to educational content in particular. Because of this, the need to understand
the impact of copyright in Africas education and research environments becomes more
urgent.
9.5 Publishing, Copyright and Licensing in the Internet Era.
As part of the PALM AFRICA project, a survey (Ikoja & Batambuze 2008) of Uganda
publishers knowledge of copyright and licensing was done and results are shown here.
On publishers knowledge of Uganda Copyright and Neigbhouring Rights Law in Uganda,
those who answered this question overwhelmingly said they were conversant with it. This
is contrary to what was said by the General Secretary of the Uganda Publishers Association
that Uganda publishers are not conversant with the Copyright and Neighbouring Rights
Act. Asked to nd out whether publishers ask for exclusive rights from their authors and
the answer was overwhelmingly yes with one saying no and another saying Not
applicable. They were asked whether copyright was a protector and again seven out of
ten said so, one denying it and one being unsure. It was asked if copyright was a barrier to
usage and wider distribution of their products. Interestingly the position reversed. Seven
67
out of ten said No while three agreed. The reasons from those who said no, were that
copyright protects authors, Uganda publishing industry was weak so it needed some form
of protection.
It was also asked whether publishers had a policy on neighbouring or subsidiary rights. One
publisher said yes, they have and gave reasons for it saying they credit the sources of materials
they get elsewhere, while four said No, preferring that they needed more information on
the topic of rights. One said they just respect other people rights while another said, any
person breaking the law faces charges in a court of law whereas another said they use rights
appropriately as a means of providing wider coverage of their products.
On photocopying they were asked whether massive photocopying of texts in tertiary
institutions were not a problem of poverty, ignorance of the law, rebellion against high
costs of books in the market or inadequate distribution of book products. On poverty six out
of eight that answered said yes while two said no. We can say that poverty, to some extent,
is a contributory factor to massive photocopying. On whether ignorance of the copyright
law was the issue causing that, nine out of ten said yes with only one objection. University
students are not aware of such law. It was also asked if photocopying was not a rebellion
against the costs of books. To this, ve agreed and three disagreed. The reason could be that it
is difcult to rebel against a situation that even your government cannot control. Publishing
is operating in a liberal market and market prices rule the day. All they are interested in is
that there are alterative ways of getting the text cheaper i.e. through photocopying that is
providing a quick solution. Finally on the inadequate distribution of products in the market,
six out of seven who answered that question agreed that inadequate distribution of books in
the market was also the cause. It must be conceded here that our distribution infrastructure
is inadequate.
Several issues were also raised about licensing ranging from their knowledge of it, application
of licensing to their publishing projects, which models they were using, benets accruing,
and awareness of exible copyright licensing practices, which can serve the interest of
publishers and book buyers and which ones they were applying. On awareness, eight of nine
that answered the question were not aware. This is important to this project. Although the
sample is small it is an indicator that more needs to be done to get participants to understand
this area well. Because they were not conversant with it, six stated that they hadnt applied
it with one saying the question was not applicable. To us the project administrators, this
meant the same thing as being unaware. None said, yes. Consequently which model and
application of the model were inconsequential at this stage. Again whether they were aware
of new exible licensing practices, the answer was that all eight who answered said, No and
consequently did not have any model they knew.
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Other important questions on licensing were whether publishing companies or organizations
had any experience providing open access to their products, applied copyright with some
right reserved, issued publications with all rights reserved, offered free online open access,
offered limited open access, offered open access to their archives and offered free rights
for translation. This was a closed question with a checklist. The emerging picture was as
follows: providing open access to their products received balanced answers. Four said yes
and four said no. Two did not say anything. Perhaps this question was ambiguous. What
did it mean? We need to discuss it further. Second was application of copyrights with some
rights reserved. On this one, the scale was again almost balanced with three saying yes
and four saying no and three not saying anything. It could be that we should have asked a
further question on which rights these were.
On issuing publications with all rights reserved, ve said yes and four stated no with one
not answering. Offering products free online open access received three saying yes and
six saying no with one remaining quiet. Offering limited open access was unanimously
rejected with all eight who answered saying No. Offering open access to their archives also
received eight Nos with only one yes. This indicates they do not do it. On offering free
rights to translations, again eight said No with one saying yes and one without position.
The outcome we are glad is that licensing and its newer models are new to publishing in
Uganda. This project becomes a good ground on which to work to cause change.
Finally publishers/organizations were asked if they would be willing to do the following:
allowing open access to their products, have some rights reserved, have all rights reserved,
allow free online open access, allow limited open access, allow open archives and permit
translations.
Outcomes from the ten that answered were as follows: allowing open access to their products
had four saying yes and four saying no with two not answering. Our interpenetration is that
those who said yes were likely to be nal managers in their units, while those rejecting were
not sure about the effect of such a move to their organizations and therefore would need
more consultations.
Having a policy on some rights reserved, received a higher score of six as against two who
said no with two again standing on the fence. This is a small indicator that publishers or
NGOs will need to stay with some rights. This is grounded on the fear that they will lose out
completely if they allowed all rights. This is understandable in our view.
On having all rights reserved it was a good picture that ve of them opposed it and three
agreed. It shows that publishers have interest in retaining some of their rights.
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Allowing free online open access was doubted. Three agreed and three disagreed and a
larger number, four remained unanswered. Our interpretation of this is that publishers/
organizations require more thinking on the benets and dangers of complete freedom.
Allowing limited open access was interesting in that half said yes and three said no and again
two hanging indecisively. We are beginning to see some direction from here. Publishers
seem comfortable with limited freedom or carrot given out and they remain holding the
stick.
On allowing open archives the opposite come out again. Half (ve) could not agree meaning
limited access was their choice. Only two were agreed to it and three did not indicate. Finally
on permitting translations it happened that half (ve) did not accept it; again preferring to
hold it themselves while three were for it. Detailed analysis brought no change since no
more questionnaires were returned.
9.6 Copyright law and information users
Individuals always seek to access information at the lowest cost. Copyright limits the
amount of information materials on the market, thereby making the available information
materials expensive. This limit is predicated on the ground that copyright restricts wider
use of information because there is no other better way to use texts than by buying the
products. It is for this reason that a violation of the law has become rampant through massive
photocopying or piracy which again many of those who do it may not know. In this regard
copyright, if viewed as a mechanism for increasing the purchase price for consumers or as a
means for controlling the market place, it is seen as at best a nuisance and at worst a barrier
to the free ow of information as one study found. It is for this reason that some countries
in Africa like South Africa, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Nigeria have introduced Reproduction
Rights Organisations (RRO). The purpose of RRO is to promote the protection of copyrights
and to provide mechanisms for the collection of royalties outside the publishers country. It
is recommended that every country should have a RRO. The success of RRO will depend on
how effective it is on licensing institutions that do a lot of photocopying and to effectively
and quickly disburse the funds collected to rights holders.
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10. Publishing in Africa: Past and Present
This section provides a brief historical perspective of the publishing industry in Africa. It
traces the publishing development, state, and identies the challenges facing it. However
publishing in Africa cannot usefully be summarized on a continent-wide scale due to the
regions general division into ve different geographical units, each with widely varying
cultures and different levels of development. The ve units are as follows: the Arab world
and the Maghreb countries of the north; the Anglophone west, east, central and southern
Africa; the Francophone west and central Africa (and the Indian Ocean islands); Lusophone
Africa and South Africa. It mainly focuses on publishing in English-speaking Africa and
against a number of social and infrastructural concerns, including the impact of colonialism,
underdevelopment in the African publishing industry.
10.1 An Historical Perspective
Historically, publishing in Africa is closely linked to European colonialism. In the view of
colonialists, book production for Africans was needed in two areas: Religion and education.
Translations of the Bible and Christian hymns began to be printed around the middle or
late in the 19
th
century. Training materials and readers in development-related areas such
as agriculture, home economics and civics were published from the 1930s and onwards-
some in local languages. State literatures Bureaus were set up in the majority of Anglophone
countries from the 1940s. The bureaus were engaged in the production of general literature
and ction as well as religious and training literature.
A study conducted at the end of 1990s about strengthening publishing in Africa (Sida and
Lars et al, 1999) has dealt with the history and development of publishing in Africa up to that
period. There is no need to re invent the wheel but to use that summary for this purpose.
The facts and situation remains the same. I was part of the study team that carried out the
study. I was responsible for East Africa region. It sums up the key ndings as follows:
1. Many African men, women and children have limited access to written material, because
of poverty and illiteracy, absence of written materials in languages they know and poor
distribution systems. There are great variations with regard to publishing between various
countries in Africa in terms of historical development, readership and market size, printing
and publishing technology, and communication infrastructure. These differences to a
large extent reect the state of development and the contemporary economic and political
situation in individual countries.
2. Certain problem areas, however, cut across these differences: inadequate access to
capital, the high price of many raw materials, and the shortage of qualied publishing
staff, in particular at middle-level, often lead to poor aesthetic and physical quality of
books,. In addition, underdeveloped marketing and distribution systems, the dominance
71
of northern publishers, inadequate attention on the part of most African governments to
book development policies, and difculties in export, in particular in intra-African trade,
are challenges facing African publishing.
3. Education in Africa is an area of great concern to African publishers, because the publishing
industry is textbook dominated. The vast majority of African publishers are involved in
textbook production which is the bread and butter of publishing (Nwanko, 2001). It is
estimated that 60-70 percent of all books published in Africa are textbooks (Sida and Lars
et al, 1999). Most of the textbook production is nanced by the World Bank and bilateral
donors.
4. During the 1990s, the environment for publishing in Africa has seen a number of changes
and improvements. Liberalization has entailed the breaking of state monopoly in textbook
publishing. The move towards lifting of restrictions on foreign exchange and the dramatic
improvements in communication technology has contributed to a more conducive publishing
environment. Democratization and globalization of the information ows have meant a
greater demand for information.
5. Publishing in Africa has now reached a level of quality and quantity, which is a sufcient
base for growth. The status of publishing in Africa has gone up. There are many publishing
houses coming up. There is a younger generation of men and women publishers with
entrepreneurial skills and international connections and there are general improvements in
terms of school enrollments and literacy levels. Women however are disadvantaged both in
the publishing sector, with some notable exceptions, and as readers and writers of books.
A little more elaborately, the report states that at independence, around 1960 for most
countries, the publishing scene was diversied. The emphasis on primary education in
newly independent nations meant that a large market for school textbooks emerged. In
the whole of sub-Saharan Africa the state was a key agent in the provision of books for
schools. In Francophone and Lusophone countries the needs were again met primarily by
publishers from former colonial power. In Eastern Africa, Ghana, Zambia, Ethiopia and
Sierra Leone, independence led to the establishment of state publishing houses. Thus, the
state, in particular the Ministry of Education became a monopolizing power within both
publishing and distribution. In Tanzania and Uganda, these rms operated jointly with
Macmillan.
In Kenya, Zimbabwe and Nigeria, foreignowned rms like Macmillan, Heinemann, Nelson,
Longman and College Press established themselves in the 1950s and 60s. From 1973 the
Nigerian military regime decreed that companies should be 60% locally owned.
72
In Francophone Africa, the publishing scene continued to be dominated by French publishers
such as Hatier, Edicet and Hachette. They had not only the advantage of size, economies of
scale, capital and access to low-printing they were also backed by French aid programmes
geared to French export books. This domination is still strong in most of Francophone Africa
today.
In Francophone Africa, local language publishing was also less developed as only French
was promoted at all levels of the educational system and in the area of general literature.
In Anglophone countries, publishing in local languages of ction and training literature
was encouraged by the literature Bureaux, particularly in Zimbabwe and South Africa-the
latter country also has an important pre-bureau tradition of indigenous language literature
by mission educated writers. In tune with its tenets of cultural apartheid the medium of
instruction in South Africa primary schools was local language. Large Afrikaaner-owned
publishing companies with close links to the national Party Government provided books
in several languages directly to government. The East African Literature Bureau, which
covered Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, also published titles in local languages such as
Luganda and Swahili.
Scattered but important local language books were published independent of colonial
authorities in most Anglophone countries. Novels in Yoruba and Hausa appeared in
Nigeria, a few Kikuyu publishers brought out ction and political literature in Kenya from
the 1940s and in Tanzania manuscripts in Swahili in Arabic script have circulated for over
two hundred years. In Kenya, Nigeria and Ghana, the 1960s and 1970s saw independent
commercial production of a large number of popular ction titles in English which sold
well.
The 1970s was a period of ourishing for African Literature. Newly established universities
served as catalysts for the production of literary magazines, and African literature in English
and French reached a world market and became recognized internationally. Most of the
prestigious titles were, however, published in France or Britain.
Readership was narrow. Most titles could only be read by the elite who had been educated
in the foreign language medium. The vast majority of people living in Africa had no access
to books with the exception of the Bible, because of low levels of literacy, few titles in local
languages, and poor distribution of the books which existed. For the large majority of readers,
literature was only met with in the educational system, and was linked to practical needs or
the need to pass exams. Reading for pleasure or general information was not widespread.
In sum, publishing in Africa until the 1980s was supply-driven, except for text books, and closely
linked to state or the church rather than driven by a demand from the general public, whose size
was in any case small except for the population of primary schools and Bible readers.
73
10.2 Secondary Textbook Authorship and Publishing
This section reviews some literature on educational publishing because it is where there
is a lot of trouble in African Publishing. According to the recent World Bank Study (2008),
local book publishing is relatively underdeveloped in francophone Africa. The Bank cites
the primary education sector as one that has made a breakthrough in publishing. The other
sub sectors in education namely secondary and higher education remain in the publishing
houses from the north.
The Bank points out that the French publishers have played a big role in developing the
regional secondary textbook publishing in response to donor efforts that encourage
transnational regional curricula. It argues rightly of course that regional publishing is more
cost effective in that longer print runs offer lower per unit costs. In addition the French
have the advantage of large back lists for adaptation, have better nancial capacity and
extensive skills in publishing that the local publishers do not match. Interestingly local
authors are often involved in writing adaptations and other publishing projects meant for
heir countries. The same study pointed out that local publishing is well developed in Cote
dIvoire (although still dominated by the northern publishers). Senegal, Mali and Cameroon
are reported to be less developed.
In the Anglophone, the same report pointed out the opposite of the French regional publishing
programme. It says regional publishing is much less pronounced in Anglophone Africa than
in the Francophone Africa. Reason given is that national educational systems are more diverse
in their form and structure than in francophone Africa. And that Anglophone Africa has
tended to develop national, country specic secondary school publishing which is perhaps
less economic in terms of prices, yet more relevant in terms of content and accessibility to
national publishing companies. The point raised here is that different foreign countries are
using models suitable to themselves to do publishing business in Africa.
In terms of costs of materials, the Bank gave comparative gures. In them we nd that
Uganda costs per a set of books ranked highest. For instance while the cost for a 14 set of
books in Uganda is US$155.1, it was only US$20.1 in the neigbhouring Tanzania for a set
of 6 books, US$57.8 in Togo for 6 books, US$40.6 for 8 books in Ghana, and 99.8 for 11 in
Cameroon. The argument is even if we derived the unit cost of a book for Tanzania and
multiply by the number of copies, it would still be less than the Ugandan cost. The study
raised the issue of geographic instability of the prices arguing that secondary textbook prices
quoted for Uganda were valid for Kampala only. This means as one gets out of Kampala
prices automatically keep raising with distance.
In terms of average unit cost per books, Uganda was in US$11.10 whereas Cameroon was
US$8.85 and Togo US$9.47. Kenya has the lowest secondary school textbook prices surveyed.
Why is this so? The answer is or can be found in what government regulations emphasize.
74
For instance Uganda emphasizes paper type, binding among others but in Kenya price is
one of the most important considerations in the evaluation process (World Bank, 2008).
Cost is a fundamental point in seeking equity in education and more so inputs like books.
PALM AFRICA project is asking simple question: can the adoption of more exible licensing
regimes contribute to improved publishing of learning materials in Africa to day?
As already mentioned in the Uganda part of the review, nancing of secondary textbooks
is almost similar in all other countries. Government, donors, parents, sponsorship and
fundraising are the main sources. The rst and second are the most important.
10.3 Text Book policies in Africa
Beginning the last decade, African governments have taken a position of liberalizing their
economies and privatizing business. Government consider themselves as poor at business
but centre their operations in producing policies that guide action. Relating this to publishing
of books, the trends are that governments have developed a strategy of allowing private
publishers to do the publishing and government remains as regulator of books that go into
the educator sector. For instance in Tanzania, government effected its new policy on textbook
production and distribution on January 1
st
, 1992. The policy comprises of a dramatic shift
from the former policy in that it aimed at improving the efciency in textbook production,
quality of books, broadening authorship, transferring responsibility of textbook publishing
to commercial publishers and developing competition and lowering of book prices Ministry
of Education and Culture). Various stakeholders were involved in the crafting of this policy
from within government, donor agencies, publishers, printers, booksellers, writers and
teachers. Uganda adopted a national book textbook policy in 1993. In Mozambique the
national policy on textbooks and learning materials was drafted in May 1998 as part of the
1997-2001 Education Sector Strategic Plan. The policy called for education to be demand-
driven, of high quality, as this country moved away from centralized state controlled systems
to more liberalized political and economic policies. (Ministry of Education, 1998). Kenyas
national policy on textbook publication, procurement, and supply of primary books is a
Ministry of Education and Human Resource Development instrument that took effect in
June 1998. The policy emphasizes the importance of quality and relevant education at all
levels. The policy evolved from centralized government production, supply and distribution
from the period soon after independence to the time a new policy was announced. In this
policy governments role becomes limited to curriculum development and quality control.
Commercial publishers will now compete to produce a wider selection of learning materials.
Kenya Institute of education is the approving agency. Among stakeholders mentioned in the
policy are the Teachers Advisory Centres, head teachers associations, school management
committees, book trade associations, and communities (Ministry of Education and Human
Resource 1998). For Zimbabwe the Ministry of Education, Sport and Culture put in a policy
in a document entitled Strategy for School Textbook provision in Zimbabwe. The aim
of the strategy is to catalyse policy formulation and direction on equity, sustainable book
75
provision, quality of education, decentralization, and cost sharing. One key recommendation
encapsulating all that was the need to develop a national book policy to address among
others educational publishing, book provision, roles and responsibilities of stakeholders, as
well as instruments for implementation and coordination (Ministry of Education, Sport and
Culture, Zimbabwe, 1998).
10.4 Languages and publishing in Africa
History shows us that it is possible for any languages to be developed and used in every
way. All languages are able to deal with all our needs. Languages develop and become
powerful in society, when they get used for important functions (South Africa 2000: 10).
However publishing and supply of educational materials to schools in Africa has been
affected by subtractive approach where a childs mother tongue is used up to a certain point
as a language of learning and teaching and then dropped in favour of another language
usually foreign. We need to use additive approach where the childs mother tongues is used
from the beginning of education and continues to be used as a language of teaching for at
least 50 percent of teaching time in school. To this are added one or two foreign languages.
We need to remember that publishing in local languages thousands of languages around
the world are perishing, as a result of globalisation or cultural repression (APNET 1999:9).
Although this is happening our indigenous languages are offering opportunities for more
avenues for publishers to diversify the work. For instance adoption of local languages in
education or thematic curriculum in Uganda is an opportunity for publishers.
10.5 Copyright Environment in Africa
A generalization about Copyright situation in Africa, with a few exceptions is that the
continent is not copyright conscious (Seeber, 1998:13). There is ignorance about the copyright
law and its provisions. Awareness of the provisions is absent within the spectrum of many
publishers (Irura, 1995). This statement is as the same today (Ikoja and Batambuze, 2008) as
it was a decade ago. Though the law exists the problem appears that the writers and artists
are not aware of it. Even the machinery for its protection is rather weak or is dened in
many countries but poorly followed. The police who are supposed to enforce the law are
not conversant with intellectual property law and so cannot write charge sheets properly.
Where action has been taken to courts of law, it takes a long time to arrive at the verdict. The
judicial system is slow and expensive (Kyeswa, 2006). But what publishers* know most are
the vices of encroachment of works by predators like students photocopying their works,
musicians pirating other peoples music.
Photocopying denitely and especially at University level is a problem that has caused a
lot of debate since the 1980s (Altbach 1986:1643-1650, 1998:7). Reprographic technology
coupled with scarcity * in Africa has been linked to reduction of printing costs. This
technology has introduced innovations in printing. For example photocopying has meant
76
that universities in developing countries can obtain access to imported books inexpensively
by simply copying them. Unfortunately with the development of photocopying technology
with photo offset printing, this has more than caused a major problem of piracy of western
copyrighted editions in African universities (Baker, 1989:18-19). It is believed that this has
allowed scholars to access information without paying for it or obtaining permissions from
western publishers or journals (Albatch, 1998; Gleason 1998). What would have been passed
off as fair copies for study have turned to become some sort of personal right to copy for
any other purpose.
The dilemma facing African publishers is how to protect their interests and those of their
authors while not losing sight of the needs of their market, and not ignoring the demands
for information hungry, cash strapped readers. It is known that books published in Africa
are very expensive and so are the imported ones. It is this high cost element versus poverty
that has bred avenues for satisfying book thirst through piracy. This is because it is cheaper
to buy a pirated copy for a half price than the original version. Piracy itself is a bad solution
from the publishing ethical point of view. Secondly governments in Africa have stopped
giving students money to buy books and consequently students cannot buy books. This
is understandably because of poverty and other problems that drain the state resources
(Seeber, 1998).
Thirdly, electronic copyright management systems are not well developed especially
in Africa. It has been a dilemma how to enforce Digital Object Identier (DOI) system.
Although its primary objective is to accommodate the changing ownership of copyright in
the publishing industry, publishing in Africa has not matured enough to see that ownership
can change several times throughout the life of a copyright. The traditional copyright regime
of a person owning copyright reigns or in the likely event of death the taker of estate of a
dead writer may have no knowledge or trading or dealing in copyright matters.
Print-on-Demand or simply On demand publishing as a concept of printing whenever
required (Keenan 1996: 178) has not been attempted in Africa on a large scale. One fear is
how many copies can be printed by the requester of the le. It is difcult to trust the recipient
who will be at liberty to print more than double copies required at the time of seeking to
print. This, it is feared can cause many copies to be printed so long as the demand exists and
the original owner is far away.
I have mentioned piracy on books but where there is a very serious problem is in music
piracy. This form of crime is so common in Africa that one wonders whether there will be a
quick answer to it. In a study reported by African Publishing Review and another carried
out in Uganda (Kyeswa, 2006), dubbing music illegally is almost a free trade. Music is a
booming industry with youth nding it the easiest way to make quick money. Manufacturers
of radio cassettes and blank tapes have a problem to cope with. Imagine some youth just
77
buys a recorder, purchases empty cassettes and the sweet taped music cassettes and sits
down to listen to all taped ones, and selects whichever suits his ears and creates a new
product into one cassette which are them multiplied. Titles of new songs are handwritten.
Some youth are even bolder that they have music kiosks for this kind of trade. In such
situation, creativity is killed and so are royalties.
In such landscape African publishers need to explore more on exible licensing models
that may reduce the problem of piracy whether in books or music while allowing users
more access and with publishers beneting. Pressure to governments to have laws in their
countries could be a deterrent but this requires a united front acting simultaneously. This is
also something of a non starter in Africa where agreeing on one thing at the level of African
Union takes time or years to agree by which time more than enough damage has occurred.
10.6 Scholarly publishing in Africa
Tracing the history of scholarly publishing takes us back to more than 300 years (Peek: 2000).
It is a kind of publishing whose origin tells more about the writer, a scholar. Hence the word
scholar means someone deeply knowledgeable about a particular subject because they have
studied it in detail; while scholarly means the process of spending a lot of time studying
and having a lot of knowledge about an academic subject (Oxford Advanced Learners
Dictionary of Current English: 2000). Therefore scholarly publishing is the publication of
academic or research oriented intellectual matter of high quality (Keenan, 1996:181) from
university presses or other suitable publishing houses.
One of the biggest challenges facing African Universities in the present times is the ineffective
scholarly press. Many African universities are publishing less and less research output each
year compared to similar institutions in developed countries. Even within the continent
there are disparities in publishing of research work and universities and associated research
institutions. Some universities and countries are doing much better than others. African
scholars and researchers on their part claim they do a lot of research and produce ground
breaking research ndings but the means to get published are either poor, too slow or non
existent within their countries or regions. Publishing internationally is also experienced to
be difcult. Where the output is available it is likely that it is not captured in the international
citation institutions like ISI but appears in non refereed journals. The effect of this is that
African research scholars output is too small to cause effective intellectual awareness of
the interested peers internationally because works remain marginally known within their
institutions of origin, are less known nationally, and are invisible internationally or at worst
stay as grey literature no body else will ever know except the owners.
Evidence shows the truth that publishing of African scholarship is weak. Altbatch (1998) for
instance noted that scholarly publishing remained a neglected research area. The World Bank
during the same time (1990s) described African scholarly output as being actually dormant.
78
The Bank using an empirical measurement in 14 universities found that research output was
very low, staffs were instead having second jobs instead of concentrating in research and the
equipment for research was also inadequate (Blair, 1991). Saint (1992:51) observed the same
scenario indicating that research output of African universities was actually inadequate. He
observed that although scholarly publishing follows scholarly research, research output has
lagged behind the training accomplishment of African universities. Using Science Citation
Index as a basis for analysis Eisemon and Davis (1991:278) found that only three African
countries i.e. Senegal, Rwanda and Congo enjoyed signicant growth in the production of
scientic papers over the past decade. By a similar method Zymelman (1990:7-8) observed
that ten countries supplied almost 90 percent of the total scientic publications in sub
Saharan Africa. Almost 70 percent was produced from three countries: Nigeria, Kenya and
Sudan. Additionally during 1988-89, it is reported that 1,388 articles were published with
49 percent of them in international journals but three Nigerian universities accounted for
72 percent of these (Houenou, 1991). The articles were predominantly in the medical and
biological elds, with physical sciences and engineering less represented. Saint (1992:25)
concluded that in general African universities with their associated scientic communities
have made little progress in fullling their mandate to generate applied and policy-relevant
knowledge as inputs to the national development process.
Lately, three initiatives have provided evidence of poor publishing record of African
universities. These are the Institute of Higher Education at Shanghai Jiao University (2003),
the Times Higher Education Supplement (2004) and the Webometrics Ranking of the World
Universities, a Saudi-Arabian based research group (Lirri, 2007). The Shanghai rankings
are based on the total alumni and academics of an institution winning Nobel Prices in
Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Physical Sciences, Engineering and Social Sciences; the
number of articles published in Nature and Science, 2003-2004; the total number of articles
indexed in Science Citation Index, Social Citation Index and the Arts and Humanities index in
2004 (Levin, 2006). Similarly the Times Higher Education Supplement (2005) based its ranking
on the percentage of international scholars or students, student-staff ratio, scholarly
publications ratio, peer review score and the recruiter scores through the opinion of major
international employers of graduates (Levin, 2006). The ranking using web metrics method
is the Saudi-Arabian based group that is committed to reputation ranking of the popularity
of a university worldwide (Lirri, 2007). In this one it is revealed that among Africas100
best universities, Makerere went down the ladder from the 23
rd
position in 2006 to the 54
th

position in 2007 and 47
th
in 2008 . The University of Dar Es salaam was in the 13
th
position
and Nairobi, the 24
th
of the best African universities. According to the Webometrics Ranking
of the World Universities website Makerere for instance dropped from the 3,628
th
position
to 6,429
th
position in 2007. In that situation, many African universities are not really visible
intellectually. Visibility of a university cannot come when the rate of publishing is low.
Visibility is measured through the ability of the academic community to recognize and gain
79
access to scholarly research output world wide. A university is renowned in the intellectual
arena by the amount of scholarly works it publishes in relevant peer reviewed journals and
the standard of monographs it publishes through their university presses.
In the nal analysis it is clear that it is only in a handful of universities that have active
press. The most common position is that presses do not have the money to publish available
manuscripts. The cost element is said to be centre of the problems. An examination of the
status quo would reveal much more than just the money. Inadequate technical capacity to
handle manuscript is visible. Absence of time to carry out quality research and capacity
to do research are other issues. This paper argues that if it is the cost element that makes
publishing more expensive, then innovations are required to use methodologies that offset
cost considerably. African universities need to move away fully or at least partially from the
traditional method of print-based publishing into E-based publishing. E-publishing offers
excellent opportunities that paper publishing cannot match.
10.61 Situation Analysis
Although Africa has seen many improvements in professional standards during the last
decade, particularly through the work of the African Publishers Network (APNET), NISC,
African Journals Online (AJOL), International Network for the Availability of Scientic
Publications (INASP), Database of African Theses And Dissertations (DATAD), it is
documented that few African publishers publish scholarly works, university publishing has
remained weak and universities as centers for research have collapsed due to the drying up
of the funding for higher education in successive years (Mazrui, 2006). Many universities
especially the newly created ones do not have university presses and where they exist, it
takes time to produce a title ostensibly because there is no money. Some universities have
had collaborative arrangements where they publish with foreign publishers especially
from the north. This arrangement is not systematic and sustainable. The problem is that
the market for scholarly products like journals is considered too small to be attractive to
larger academic publishers. Smaller, local publishers are unable to survive with scholarly
products as the sole focus of lists.
Many African journals are sustained by donors and after the donors pulls out it mean the
journal closing a short time after. Those started by institutions on the pressure of publish
or perish close sooner than they are started. Editorial standard is often worrisome in some
of them because the products come out with unforgivable structural, typographical and
grammatical errors. Paper for production is sometimes the wrong type compromising
quality. Sometimes it is not available when it is required most. African countries are net
importers of paper since few countries manufacture it and where it is made, need for it
within the countries of manufacture far outweighs supply. South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania,
Nigeria are some of the paper producers on the continent.
80
Other production inputs like inks, lms, and printing plates are imported at a higher cost.
Labour is often laborious involving rst generation equipment of letter setting or even with
the third generation machinery like the polygraph whose work involves rounds of inking
plates, replacement and cleaning of rollers after each work including gathering and folding,
collating and binding of quires. These all add up to a sizeable establishment and more
workers that translate into huge wage bill. Fourth generation equipment, the Desk Top
Publishing (DTP) Units have so far offered relief to many African publishing outts.
With few skilled craftspeople and cost accountants, one can be sure of substandard products
but expensive as well, as production is less tenable in most of Africa and the efciency of
the print shop is questionable sometimes. For many journals that come out, the print-run
is often very small to justify publication and this pushes the production costs to the limit.
At the end of the chain, reading itself is a big handicap. This is low in general throughout
the education system including universities for many reasons including poorly resourced
libraries, competition from exciting technologies of TV, lms, etc. For universities especially
it is also because the likely readers cannot see copies of journals on the shelves or share few
copies that end being stolen or pages removed from them. Libraries budgets do not permit
sustainable journal subscription that come irregularly or any journal at all. It is a tradition
that journals are subscribed for. Buying them individually isnt what we are accustomed to.
It is an institutional rather than individual matter.
Publishing at the international countries of excellence according to those who have attempted
it is said has its own woos. African scholars claim that they are marginalized from world
publishing. It is their experience that on rst receipt of the submissions they often receive a
diplomatic reply from journal editors that what has been submitted looks interesting and
the editor will further inform the author about the review process which takes months or
longer waiting and nally receiving a heart hitting message that it has been rejected because
it is considered either inferior, irrelevant, dated, is of poor quality or something else. It is
partly the issue of poor quality that invites higher rejection rates and increases resistance
among reviewers to evaluate articles from developing countries. But where one is lucky to
receive mild acceptance comments often will advise rewriting or getting article edited by a
person whose native language is English or language of the journal, shortening of article,
improving referencing style, requesting restructuring of the article for resubmission. The
managing editors are even more polite. The editor tells you that in case you are not able to
make the necessary adjustments by a particular date you are advised to inform the editor
about it or the editor is humbler to inform the author that if you cannot meet the journal
requirements or deadline stated then the author should feel free to submit it elsewhere. This
also takes time either way. I do not say African scholars and researchers have not written
works that have been accepted immediately by international journals. They have and are
many but to reach that high standard these authors must have also gone through a harrowing
81
experience or were lucky to have been taught technical or scholarly communication earlier.
But their numbers pitted against the continental output of Europe or the Americas reduces
the percentage dramatically.
These are the sort of difculties African scholars face and are in my view one of the reasons
the Public Knowledge Project workshop was held at Makerere University Library Uganda
from the 14
th
to 15
th
June 2007 by the Department of Languages and Literacy Education
of the University of British Columbia with the support of the Canadian International
Development Research Centre (IDRC). The aims of the workshop were three fold: introducing
the researchers from the Uganda Universities and research institutions, journal editors,
librarians, IT specialists and students etc to the Open Journal System; examining the perceived
challenges of online publishing in Africa vis--vis the challenges of traditional scholarly
publishing; sharing ways online technologies (e.g., locally maintained open source software
[OSPS]) can be used to strengthen and support scholarly publishing and the feasibility of
establishing online sites in Africa (Uganda) and moving journals to online management and
full text publishing. Achieving these objectives means strengthening scholarly publishing
in Africa by making choices of either remaining in the traditional method or taking up
innovative approach such as e-publishing as a possible route for leveraging the potential of
researchers existing among the African Universities. E-scholarly publishing is part of wide
programme of re-engineering publishing in the information age in which the application of
ICTs leads to digital publishing.
Although there are problems about publishing in Africa, there are great variations between
various countries in terms of historical developments, readership and market size, printing
and publishing technology, and research support and communication infrastructure. These
differences to a large extent reect the state of development and the contemporary economic
and political situation of the individual countries. Certain problems areas denitely cut
across these differences: inadequate access to capital, the high price of many raw materials,
and the shortage of qualied staff, in particular middle level, often lead to poor aesthetic
and physical quality of products. In addition, underdeveloped marketing and distribution
systems, the dominance of northern publishers, inadequate attention on the part of most
African governments to information development polices, and difculties in export, in
particular in intra-African trade, are challenges facing the African publishing industry
including scholarly publishing.
African universities have missions that anchor on teaching, research and community work.
Although universities could be doing this locally, wider dissemination of research based
information is an important component of their existence. African scholars research works
most of the times remain in ofces, repositories as grey literature. Access to it, even by the
research community itself within countries is very limited. This has in one way led to the
82
underrating of African universities, because their research output is not globally visible
on the internet. This curtails scholarship. Scholarship is about the creation and sharing of
knowledge, and one of the most important means of exchanging the results of research
activities is in the academic journal (Stranack). To capture the lost time it is eminently clear
that African research scholars need a radical paradigm shift to address the invisibility of
their scholarly capacity by going online in the publishing of their research output especially
journals and monographs. This is because journals and monographs are the backbone of
scholarly work, providing a medium for the exchange of ideas and information and for
debate. Scholarly journals can enable more scholars to be published than would be possible
through books alone, and can have considerable outreach. They are extremely important as
a forum for exchanging peer views on the latest developments in the world of knowledge.

10.6.1 Case for e-scholarly publishing
Many factors do not allow African scholars to come to the world literary market place
that easily. First African universities must examine problems facing African scholarship in
their bid to share intellectual property and develop a turn-around, alternative strategy for
publishing in African Universities. A review of literature on the subject brings into focus a
myriad of challenges. For instance for the African scholarly publications to be of excellent
quality, on a par with the best being produced elsewhere in the world, African universities
must attend to problems of scholars in the areas of editing and production, marketing and
distribution (Katama 1997). She remarked that:
Scholarly publishing is beset with titanic problems including a dearth of expertise,
marketing difculties, distributing costs and most importantly, the lack of an
appropriate forum to voice concerns, share experiences and learn from more successful
enterprises all over the world
A critical issue discussed at this seminar was the low readership level registered in the
continent and the lack of resources within the universities that make an already difcult
publishing arena impossibly difcult. African Universities need to develop several
capacities, mainly technological (modern equipment and software), human resources
(manpower, technical expertise), and nancial (hosting fees for the web). African universities
need to overcome institutional resistance to change from rapid change into electronic based
publishing (Ouya & Smart, 2005).
E-scholarly publishing has a much higher advantage of eliminating some production
activities and inputs needed for product development. It eliminates to some extent costs
involved in advertising, postage and distribution of the product but sets in the cost of hosting
and maintaining the website. It brings with it the advantages of quality product, world
wide distribution, instant advertisement, increased visibility, advantage of international
peer review, editorial process and eliminates cumbersome manuscript management
83
process, increased visibility of writer, eliminates product inputs like paper, ink, and binding
materials, eliminates storage facilities although it brings in other costs such as hosting and
maintaining the websites.
To narrow the knowledge divide, African universities need a new strategy of thinking and
acting intellectually. African universities require a paradigm shift from the present to nd
new opportunities that online electronic scholarly publishing offer. African universities need
to understand that the past methods of publishing are difcult to sustain. Globalization is
a reality and the efforts of e-scholarly publishing are providing an enabling and supportive
environment. Globalization is about doing things according to the order the developed
countries have designed but not the other way round. African scholars fear of another
form of colonialism in knowledge aid can be averted through active research, writing and
publishing. African universities can do their own publishing in Africa. After all, a journey
of a thousand miles begins with one step, a Chinese would proclaim. African scholars
must demonstrate that they can make new beginnings with new opportunities that are
cheaper and environmentally cleaner. One of the contributions of e-publishing is saving
on environment. Many trees are saved from the lumbers saw for papermaking. This has
been provided by the example of Open Journal System (OJS). OJS brings in the benets of
providing a new and unique record of scholarly activity. OJS enhances scholarly recognition
it brings to a university (Stranack 2006). It contributes a lot to making an individual enrich
his/her research area. This venture also joins a university to the club of scholars making
local research visible throughout the continent and abroad.
Electronic publications are cheaper to run and can be disseminated to a narrow and wider
sphere at lower cost than print publications. All that is needed is to start small and grow
carefully. African universities need to constitute effective publishing teams, train them in
areas of weakness and vote funds for activities like reviewing, editing and layout. African
universities need a clear exible publishing policy to be worked out. There should be no
space for failure, no room for failure. Scholars rm commitment to research and publish
culture should be cultivated if African universities are to grow to full maturity.
African scholars need to take advantage of the Internet. The Internet is now rmly established
as a marketing tool. It serves as an integral part of the marketing mix serving as a digital
distribution channel as well as an electronic storefront. The internet is an interactive medium
as opposed to traditional marketing which allows only one-way communication. It offers
signicant opportunity for reducing operating costs particularly printing and distribution
costs. It enables marketing managers to update product databases instantly and continuously,
as new product features are developed and price adjustments are made. In fact it is even
more productive when and where links are provided to other sites. The Internet medium is
ideal for the fragmented nature of todays consumer markets. This technological revolution
84
has had a major impact on the ow of information and has created new forms of publishing
that give consumers instant, on-line access to some publications. E-publishing is the new
summit of hope at the beginning of this millennium. The entry of Open Access publishing
beginning only in the 1990s is one of the solutions to African research scholarship. All
sectors worldwide are examining ways of reducing costs and improving service delivery
through the cost effective and innovative use of ICT. ICTs should therefore be interpreted as
a modern managerial approach to increase productivity and efciency (Nolan, 2001).
10.7 Training in Publishing in Africa
In the present times we can claim with some degree of certainty that there is some form of
publishing going on in every country so that some kind of training goes on. By training it is
meant acquisition of knowledge and skills in different aspects of publishing such as publishing
management, editing, printing, photography, marketing, legal aspects of publishing and so
on. We recognize training to be carried out at four levels that is, training in-house, training
organized by local and regional associations, training by continental associations such as
the APNET and formal training in institutions of learning.
Nationally, it is a usual practice for Publishers Associations as part of their activities to
organize workshops and get together seminars where they teach members on issues of
weakness affecting their publishing establishments. Examples of Associations doing this are
the Uganda Publishers Association and the Publishers Association of South Africa (PASA).
At the continental level African Publishers Network (APNET) an organization established
in 1992 is responsible for promoting indigenous publishing on the African continent.
Its mission is the transformation of Africa through access to books. In order to promote
such a vision for the future, APNET focuses on the strengthening of national publishers
associations in order to enable them to undertake a national role as promoters of improved
access to African books. The main activities of APNET are related to training of national
publishing communities, marketing of African books, research, and general information
sharing (APNET Evaluation 1998:13). APNET comprises of national publishers associations
and publishing communities in 27 countries as of 1998. The activities of the network are
coordinated through a Secretariat in Zimbabwe. To implement its activities APNET receives
substantial funding from a wide range of different donors.
There are a few formal training institutions in Africa where publishing studies are undertaken
like it is done in Brooks College Oxford or Stirling University in Scotland. Some of these
training institutions are: University of Witwatersrands postgraduate publishing studies
programme. The course is offered as part of African literature III. Current course outline
includes Publishing studies, 20
th
Century Black Intellectual History; African Literature;
Orality, Literacy and Readership, and Canonical Writers and the Post Colonial Experiences
in Africa (Mpe, 1999:12). At Makerere Universitys East African School of Library and
Information Science, publishing prole includes Publishing Management, Editing,
Electronic Publishing, Book Design, Marketing and Book Trade all taught at undergraduate
85
level leading to the degree level of library and information science. Moi University in Kenya
offers some courses in publishing studies at postgraduate level as part of the Information
Science Faculty. In West Africa Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology
offers two programmes at post graduate level that is publishing at postgraduate diploma
level and an M.A. in Publishing and Media Studies.
10.8 Where do we go from here?
There is a kind of trend in Africa, Uganda inclusive that any new thing brought in their
midst, takes time to adopt. While some people take up the idea immediately, others wait
on the fence to see success from the trials. But the world is moving in time and space. The
future is ours today and now. It only requires pragmatism to start something and get on
with it or leave it. PALM AFRICA project is coming with a noble idea to scratch our heads.
It is seeking to reduce the gaps in book provision in African communities by proposing
alternatives to the mono tradition of publishing basing on copyright methodology. This
change is expected from the practitioners themselves. So far licensing appears to be one
business model along the way. For instance in licensing, a book published abroad that has
higher potential in a country like Uganda where people are too poor to afford books could be
licensed to a local publisher to reproduce copies at fraction of a cost and sold within Uganda
or East Africa and not beyond. This has been done in India where western publishers have
licensed some Indian publishers to issue economy editions and to be sold only in India. To
get more books to more people in Africa we could follow Indian example. Indias low cost
mass production did not just happen in a day. It follows from a large reading population
resulting from the political will to promote readership through consistent education and book
policies (Nwanko, 2001:11). This could as well solve the problem of rampant photocopying
assumedly rampant in tertiary institutions.
Secondly with the rampant lack of knowledge about copyright, it cannot be reasoned that
it is the reason why alternative publishing business models cannot be adopted. In fact to
bridge the knowledge gap and reduce this threatening digital divide into digital dividends,
African publishers must adopt a new way of thinking. Print-On-Demand (POD) or On
Demand Publishing (ODP) is yet another business model that can address the role of digital
printing in getting books published in Africa. POD requires this paradigm shift to nd
what opportunities ICT offers to by-pass the limitations of lack of investment capital and
inadequate physical infrastructure ordinarily essential for getting their books to the market
place (Nwanko, 2001:1). In fact this opens alternative gate for education of publishers,
writers and other stakeholders on copyright law.
Thirdly, there are many other options or models that have come up as a result of ICTs. There
is a trend towards open educational resources. This has been enabled by e-publishing. E-
publishing offers a number of options such as allowing text to be read but no down loading,
allowing free reading including downloading, only showing table of content but whole
86
product one needs to contact the publishers and so on. There are even e-archiving services.
All these developments in ICT have brought forward possibilities of doing business for all.
It is this that we are looking for without destabilizing publishers.
Fourthly the library environment is changing. Users of libraries are getting accustomed to
accessing information online. Models for accessing information products are increasing
to include subscription, E-books conversion, and In house generated products. It is the
responsibility of the publishing industry to respond and match to the challenge. In this
connection, publishing industry should not be seen as an obstacle to information technology
developments.
Fifthly, it must be said here that Africa is lagging behind in terms of local content contribution
on the Internet. This decit is one of the factors causing a digital divide. The quest is to narrow
this divide. Whereas Africa would do well to embrace some of the western content, it should
also be a contributor of its own content to the rest of the world. ICTs have denitely brought
possibilities from which Africa could contribute to the international information pool. One
area worth mentioning is that there is a lot of publishing of the information products by
NGOs especially those dealing with HIV/AIDS. People need that information a lot and
the world needs to learn how Africa is dealing with the scourge. And yet it is difcult to
access such information in the present print form because it is not widely distributed and
it is skewed to few languages and a few people. Another area is local research that is being
done in institutions. There is a lot for instance about malaria that could be uploaded onto
the Internet for all to read. Presently this is a grey area that has not been given enough
attention locally in Africa. Already the western world is experimenting and consolidating
on information equity using the Creative Commons Licenses including attributions, having
no derivations, being non commercial and the share- alike. There are several Creative
Commons Licenses such as the Science commons, CC Internationals ports, CC learn -
minimizing barriers, CC laboratories - Projects currently under development, CC mixture
- community music site, Commons - useful information materials to members. Instead of
starving of information this suit of licences provide possibilities to be exploited.
Sixthly, as stated above one of the problems of publishing in Africa is lack of money,
inadequate distribution of information products or marketing and so on. I can say that with
developments in ICT and pairing those difculties with it, it becomes essentially obvious
that African publishers need a small change of mindset to look at the way the world is
moving. It is a personal view that the current of publishing coming on stage cannot be
stopped but made good use of it. It is like saying re is bad when in the actual fact re
is a friend because the role it plays. We in Africa either tow the line or we are ourselves
responsible for widening the digital divide.
87
Similarly and this has been mentioned above, many institutions especially universities
are already publishing journals in paper form. The Universities are nding difculties in
running journals due to budgetary constraints. Evidence from AJOL shows that only four
countries are somehow managing to consistently publish and keep their journals online.
Therefore coming to terms with e-world using appropriate Commons could help in reducing
to a great extent the problems associated with costs. This is because the Internet is now
rmly established as a marketing tool that works as an integral part of the marketing mix
serving as a digital distribution channel as well as an electronic storefront. The internet
offers a valuable opportunity for reducing costs particularly printing and distribution costs.
It enables marketing managers to update product databases instantly and continuously, as
new product features are developed and price adjustments are made. This technological
revolution has had a major impact on the ow of information and has created new forms of
publishing that give consumers instant, on-line access to some publications. Who are we not
to follow suit? This is the message PALM AFRICA is attempting to send across.
Relating this to ICTs still, it will be mentioned that more opportunities are coming to Africa
as a result of the liberalisation of economies. ICTs especially computers are entering countries
almost free and in some cases completely free of tax, Internet networks are improving
throughout the continent and at least every country is connected with an estimated number
of 9,000,000 million users. The growth of the internet use in the world grew by 203 percent
from 2000-2007 while the growth in Africa has been much larger at 625 percent (Esseh, 2007).
And there is increasing and cheaper mobile technology, improved ICT literacy through
telecentres, improved rural connectivity by Internet Service Providers. Additionally, web
hosting is becoming cheaper, E-commerce initiatives are taking root, open source software
is getting widely used in the market and selling and distribution of refurbished computers
is also gradually becoming a reality on the continent. Although the cost of connectivity is
still high, internet reliability and skills were still a problem, what publishers need to do is to:
starting with developing their websites, building own capacity, acquiring equipment and
developing content for online consumption. By so doing using ICTs would benet publishers
from quicker publicity, learning from other publishers, accessing a lot of free materials on
the internet and reducing the cost of publishing. ICTs have the advantage of integrating
text with voice and images in one product, facilitating outsourcing of expertise in remote
locations, taking advantage of social networks such web 2 and blogs while minimizing
waste of unused resources and keeping archive of passed publications. The opportunities
include capacity to market products locally and globally, accessing picture databases (photo
websites), applying exible licensing (e.g. Creative Commons) and the introduction of local
content. There is need to change the mindset from the traditional methods to modern ways
of doing publishing work. One of the inputs to PALM AFRICA project is really the idea
of factoring of ICTs to the job of publishing. There are increasing developments in ICT in
relation to publishing where possibilities are appearing when and where it was possible to
gain Knowledge for free because of the emergence of open education resources.
88
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