Rwandans have been urged to encourage children to read a variety of books not only in schools, but also at home. The call was made by Julienne Uwacu, the minister for sports and culture, during the launch of ‘Children Readership Preferences Study’ organised by Save the Children Rwanda last week. The call is indeed in line with government efforts to address the poor reading culture in the country. The country’s reading culture is still poor despite efforts by key stakeholders to promote writing and reading as a culture across the country. However, like they say, it is easier to bend the tree while it’s young. This should be applied to the reading culture campaign. It is easier to ‘bend children’ to embrace the reading culture. That is why Minister Uwacu’s call to raise a generation of children that love reading and writing is the way forward to fill the reading culture gap. It will form a firm foundation for a reading future generation. The strategy to enhance the reading culture should, first and foremost, target children. When children are raised in an environment that encourages them to read and write, they grow up to appreciate the culture of reading as adults. Development partners, including publishers, and the community in general, should play their part in engaging children to adopt the reading culture at a young age. However, this requires availability of affordable children books, yet studies show that many children don’t have access to such books. A study conducted by a USAID-funded project, ‘Mureke Dusome,’ between June and November in four districts, showed that the majority of children in the country live in rural areas and are not exposed to reading materials. Local publishers should consider writing more affordable books for children.
