"Ethiopia printed more than 78 million textbooks for 20.1 million students under GEQIP1. When the current reliance on development partners to provide teaching/learning materials comes to an end, these impressive gains can be sustained only if the Ethiopian government allocates adequate, predictable
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yearly financing from the treasury to do so. Based on the experience of GEQIP1, the average budget to sustain the provision of textbooks and teaching guides is estimated at 6–8 percent of the yearly recurrent budget for education (8–10 percent if supplementary materials are added). A second prerequisite for sustaining these gains is to develop an effective information management system to track national demand for textbooks in relation to supply and facilitate inventory control. To handle the complexities of international competitive bidding and maintain a strict timeline for routine delivery, the MoE should plan a robust capacity-building exercise that will help Ethiopia not only to manage textbook provision for larger linguistic groups but mainstream access to textbooks for minority groups as well. Lack of expertise and limited production facilities of local publishers and printers have required the government to resort to international alternatives, sometimes to the detriment of local enterprises. Given that it would be preferable to rely on local suppliers to produce teaching/learning materials of comparable quality to those produced internationally, a systematic effort is essential to scale up local capacity and enable the local printing industry to become competitive in supplying national requirements. As in many nations, Ethiopia’s weakest link in the textbook supply chain is the distribution system. Schools in rural and remote areas suffer the most. Restructuring the delivery system would ensure more timely distribution of teaching/learning materials from districts (woredas) to schools. Finally, students must be encouraged to bring their textbooks to school rather than keep them at home for fear of damaging them and incurring fines. Teachers, who are the primary facilitators of learning, must be trained in effective handling of textbooks and to play an active role in sensitizing families to the importance of using textbooks in the classroom." (Main findings, page xiv)
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"The key role of textbooks and other teaching and learning materials (TLMs) in enhancing the quality of learning is almost universally recognized. Numerous factors are involved in provision of TLMs, including curriculum, literacy and numeracy, language of instruction policy, procurement and distribu
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tion challenges, TLM development and production and their availability, management, and usage in schools. Where Have All the Textbooks Gone? Toward Sustainable Provision of Teaching and Learning Materials in Sub-Saharan Africa seeks to explain why adequate and effective provision of TLMs has remained so elusive in Sub-Saharan Africa and identifies actions necessary to make quality TLMs sustainably available to all pupils and well used in primary and general secondary education. This rich compilation of information is based on the extensive and multifaceted experience of the author’s work in the education sector in Africa. This book, which draws from more than 40 anglophone, francophone, lusophone, and Arabic-speaking countries, will be particularly useful for policy makers, development partners, and other stakeholders attempting to understand the spectrum of issues surrounding the complexity of textbook provision in Sub-Saharan Africa." (Back cover)
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"Dieses Sachlexikon bietet nun bereits in dritter, gründlich überarbeiteter und ergänzter Auflage Grundlagenwissen rund um das Medium Buch: von der Handschrift über das gedruckte Buch bis zum E-Book. Auch andere Schriftmedien wie das Flugblatt, die Zeitung oder die Zeitschrift sind berücksichti
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gt. In ca. 1.500 Artikeln werden alle Bereiche von Buch und Buchhandel behandelt, knapp, verständlich und fachlich kompetent: Herstellung und Technik, Markt und Marketing, Recht und Zensur, Lesen, Schreiben und Drucken, Buchausstattung und Buchillustration sowie Bibliotheken. Zahlreiche Zeichnungen und Graphiken veranschaulichen den komplexen Stoff." (Klappentext)
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"Bücher für alle verfügbar und zugänglich zu machen, war oberste Zielsetzung der Buchförderungsprogramme der UNESCO. Die vorliegende Studie untersucht die Maßnahmen, die die UNESCO weltweit zur Verbesserung der Produktions- und Distributionsstrukturen des Buches durchführte, und geht Fragen n
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ach der Funktion des Buches in der Gesellschaft nach. Unterschiedlich strukturierte Buchmärkte werden in weltweit vergleichender Betrachtung einander gegenübergestellt." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"The proceedings of a conference held at the Africa Institute of South Africa in 2009, this is a major new collection of essays on the state of scholarly publishing in Africa, with a strong emphasis on the situation in South Africa. The conference was convened, and the papers published, in an attemp
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t to influence “policymakers and other relevant stakeholders in developing an enabling environment for scholarly publishing to thrive.” Containing a total of 26 papers – all of them, usefully, preceded by abstracts – content is arranged under seven sections: (i) The State of Research Publishing in Africa, (ii) The State of Scholarly Publishing in Africa, (iii) The Challenges of Book Distribution, (iv) The Impact of Information and Communication Technologies on Scholarly Publishing, (v) Alternative Publishing Models, (vi) The Politics of Peer Review in Scholarly Publishing, and (vii) Scholarly Publishing and Intellectual Property Development in Africa. While the majority of the contributors are from South Africa, other contributors include Kenyan veteran publisher Henry Chakava, James Currey of James Currey Publishers, Mary Jay, Chief Executive of the Oxford-based African Books Collective, and a number of academics from the West African region. The book is particularly strong in overviews of scholarly publishing in South Africa, covering both book and journal publishing. It offers some interesting discussions and fresh insights about alternative publishing and distribution models, with articles reporting about new initiatives and strategy approaches, and also including papers on the politics and practise of the peer review process, and on South African intellectual property rights. One or two papers, by academics from other regions of Africa, unfortunately are weak and poorly informed about the current state of scholarly publishing in Africa, for example citing literature that goes back to books and articles published in the 1970s and 1980s. However, the book can be seen as a useful companion to ‘African Scholarly Publishing Essays’, edited by Alois Mlambo, and published by African Books Collective in 2006." (Hans M. Zell, Publishing, Books & Reading in Sub-Saharan Africa, 3d ed. 2008, nr. 2581)
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"Reviews the activities and achievements of a number of African book trade and book promotional organizations, thereafter examines the progress that has been achieved in some areas affecting the book sector, and discusses issues such as the World Bank as a major player in African publishing, digital
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media and African publishing, Internet access by the African book professions, collaboration and knowledge sharing, production quality, research and documentation, and African books in the international market place. The author concludes “while two or three decades ago it might have been correct to describe African publishing as extremely underdeveloped, this is certainly not the picture now. It is true of course that many formidable obstacles and challenges remain, including weak technology infrastructures, high distribution costs, the lack of coherent national book policies, high tariff barriers, illiteracy, extreme poverty, and little disposable income, among them. Nevertheless, significant gains have been made, and there have been several collective efforts to build capacity. Not all of them have been successful, and there have been many setbacks and disappointments too, notably APNET, but it is vital to build on the gains. While both governments and donors have heavily invested in education over the years, support for the book sector and library development, paradoxically, has remained quite dismal for the most part. Sadly, thirty-five years after the Ife conference, most African governments still don’t seem to appreciate that a flourishing book and reading culture is central to, and an indicator of, development in any country." (Hans M. Zell, Publishing, Books & Reading in Sub-Saharan Africa, nr. 2521, online at http://www.hanszell.co.uk/pbrssa/index.shtml)
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"Indian books have increasingly begun to find a market in Africa and Indian publishers now find it both lucrative and important to attend book fairs in different African countries. One of the advantages that Indian publishers have is in terms of prices. They are able to produce good quality books at
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a fraction of the prices that are charged by publishers from the West. Similarly, African publishers are beginning to find a market in India." (GIZ library Bonn)
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"This collection of essays was published to honour Chief Aigboje Higo on his 70th birthday. Higo, by many considered to be the doyen of Nigerian book publishing, was a founding father and two-time president of the Nigerian Publishers Association, and for many years Managing Director and later Chairm
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an of Heinemann Educational Publishers (Nigeria) plc. The 15 contributions that are brought together in this Festschrift include essays by many prominent members of the African book professions, including Bodunde Bankole, Henry Chakava, Ayo Odeniyi, the late Victor Nwankwo, as well as Keith Sambrook, a former director of Heinemann's in the UK, whose chapter recounts the story of his visit to Nigeria in 1964 when he and the late Alan Hill (then Chair of Heinemann's) met up with Aig Higo and asked him to join HEB and take charge of their business in Nigeria and West Africa. There are also papers on the economics of publishing, training for book industry personnel, and Bodunde Bankole presents an interesting account of the history and development of the Nigerian Publishers Association and its collaboration with international book trade organizations to provide more visibility for Nigerian book publishing output. A flawed index apart, this is a valuable source of information on the development of publishing and the book trade in Nigeria, and also provides useful overviews of publishing practise in the country." (Hans M. Zell, Publishing, Books & Reading in Sub-Saharan Africa, 3d ed. 2008, nr. 755)
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"Un inventaire exhaustif de tous les aspects de l'état du livre dans le monde francophone, y compris la production, la législation relative au livre, les droits d'auteur et la fiscalité, les politiques nationales du livre, ainsi que la commercialisation et la distribution. Comprend des sections s
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ur la chaîne du livre dans les pays francophones d'Afrique subsaharienne et ceux d'Afrique du Nord." (Hans M. Zell, Publishing, Books & Reading in Sub-Saharan Africa, 3d ed. 2008, nr. 398)
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"Este es el primer estudio de cubrimiento regional sobre la distribución y comercialización del libro, con énfasis en las librerías de América Latina y para realizarlo se escogieron cuatro países: Colombia y México que han desarrollado investigaciones sistemáticas sobre la producción editor
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ial, y Chile y Costa Rica que no tienen publicaciones actualizadas sobre estos temas." (Introduccón)
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