ZIMBABWE’S CURRENT LITERACY RATE DISPUTED

By Beaven Tapureta

Zimbabwe Reads, collaborative effort between Zimbabweans and international friends aiming to create a reading culture in Zimbabwe, has published a report on the plummeting local reading culture. The report dispels the general excitement that has been going on about the high literacy rate (91.9%) which Zimbabwe enjoys ahead of other African countries.

According to the report, this optimistic figure was provided a decade ago by UNESCO and the government, and it is unlikely that the same figure still stands today, given a number of factors that have come into play in the country since about 2005.

Literacy rate is here used to mean the percentage of people over the age 15 who can read and write.

Zimbabwe experienced deep economic and political crises in the last decade, a situation that has affected the education and relative sectors.

According to the report, since 2005 the number of school dropouts increased due to pressure of school fees, the number of registered public library users diminished and reading for pleasure became a rare phenomenon.

Public libraries which used to be pleasurable places for most Zimbabweans in the 80’s and 90’s, the report says,  have been turned into warehouses of worn out books as budgets have left these libraries unable to acquire additional books.

International donations, cited as the only way to solve the problem, have not been sufficient mainly due to the eco-political scenario in the past years.

Given all these negative trends, the report maintains that if things go unchecked, Zimbabwe will have a literacy rate of 70% in 2020.

However, the report acknowledges the hope brought about by the Education Transition Fund launched in 2010 and is being coordinated by UNICEF and the Ministry of Education, Sport, Art and Culture and funded by a number of foreign governments.

The Fund, which continues this year, has brought relief to schools as about fifteen million textbooks in core subjects were made available to children in 5,675 primary schools and seven million textbooks to 2,333 secondary schools in 2010 and beginning of 2011.

The report notes that book donations from non-governmental organisations such as Book Aid International, World Vision, and US-Africa Children’s Fellowship were also helpful in enhancing the availability of books in schools but these have always not been enough.

That Zimbabwe has become a local and international ‘news peg’ and that many of its citizens have converted to Christianity is no doubt. Newspaper and Bible reading cultures have improved in the last two years, the report says, with internet use remaining low.

There continue to be challenges facing reading culture as observed in the report, with the main challenge being that textbooks alone cannot bridge the reading gap.

If the report is something to reckon with, then local reading culture is at risk and this calls for government, non-governmental organisations and all other stakeholders to act timely to quell the situation.

Although various efforts are being done to improve Zimbabwe’s reading culture, most Zimbabweans have not yet fully come to terms with the demise of many organisations that used to promote reading in cities and rural areas.

One of these organisations is the now defunct Zimbabwe Book Development Council (ZBDC) formed in 1992 to create a reading culture in Zimbabwe with primary focus on children’s literacy.

ZBDC successfully ran reading promotion programmes such as the annual National Reading Week, the Book Fund Project, Children’s Reading Tent and the Children’s Book Forum.

These programmes empowered rural libraries and children by making available funds for libraries to buy locally published books (excluding textbooks) and pitching reading tents to provide a non-school environment for children to read, perform poetry and dance, draw and engage in other literary activities.

The Children Reading Tent was popular at the annual Zimbabwe International Book Fair that its absence in the last few years has been painfully conspicuous and debilitating.

The Literature Bureau also made efforts to create a reading environment by conducting mobile rural libraries and running competitions for authors although there were colonial nuances attached to the institution.

While the Education Transition Fund has made progress in providing schools with learning materials and technical assistance, there is more that needs to be done without mourning over past failures but seriously engaging all stakeholders in a collective campaign to resuscitate reading interest and habits.

The report by Zimbabwe Reads is based on a reading survey done with donor organisations, booksellers, publishers, librarians and educators in the last months of 2011.