By David G Maillu
Published February 21, 2024

How Far Can Kenya's Cultural Development Go Without Government Support of the Book Industry?Without learning how to read and write from books, you would not be reading this article. Christianity, Islam and other religions would be nonexistent without the sacred books. Illiteracy has no value in the present world. If anything, it is a grave liability. The book is the religion of modern life. The most civilized nations in the world publish
and read books religiously.

As of now, statistics say the United Kingdom has about 3,700 Libraries, where nearly 7.3 million people are active book borrowers, with about 200 million visitors to public libraries per year and an additional 131
million total online visits. Libraries issue almost 165 million books a year. There are 14,925 staff working in public libraries not to mention additional volunteer workers. The book is serving a population of 66.97
million people. There are 905 publishing companies in the UK. This is the civilization that colonized a quarter of the world.

RELATED: Poets Society of Kenya Conducts Youth Empowerment Workshops

What is the status of book publishing and reading culture in Kenya?Compare that status with the Kenya’s. If we say Kenya’s population is about 50 million, Britain is ahead of Kenya by about 16 million people.
How many public libraries are there in Kenya as of today? In the entire Republic of Kenya, there are 64 public libraries spread across different parts of the country, which may be either operational or nonoperational.
Records claim that there are 50 Publishing Houses in Kenya. However, the majority of them are in the baby stages. Some of Kenya’s main publishing houses, still at the elemental level, are Jomo Kenyatta Foundation, Kenya Literature Bureau, East African Educational Publishers, Longhorn Publishers, Moran Publishers, Phoenix Publishers,
and Oxford University Press.

What is the status of book publishing and reading culture in Kenya compared to the British one? How
intellectually independent can we claim to be? How does the British publishing and reading eye see us?

RELATED: Prince Harry Memoir Spares Not British Royalty

All Kenyan publishers concentrate on publishing school text books because that is where the big money is. But that is also where the publishing death trap is fixed.All Kenyan publishers concentrate on publishing school text books because that is where the big money is. But that is also where the publishing death trap is fixed. The school curriculum can change any time at the whim of someone posing as educationist by changing the curriculum without giving publishers any notice. Hence, a publisher holding a stock of millions of shillings printed from bank loan can wake
up one day to be told the stock is outdated. He’s now the holder of dead stock. This is why publishers have remained at the elementary stage.

The book industry has remained at the primitive stage with mounting claim that Kenyans don’t read. Where are the books for them to read? A graduate of primary school goes home to live the hell of nothing to read
for the rest of his life. His English is too poor for reading any English book. There are no books published in his mother tongue that could help him expand his knowledge. The few publishers that exist in Kenya dare not publish general books because of economic reasons. The government has imposed tax on books, printing paper, and books have become very expensive and luxuries to many people. The government is killing reading culture.

RELATED: African Union Should Take Charge of African Security

The book industry has remained at the primitive stage with mounting claim that Kenyans don’t read. Where are the books for them to read?The population of the Akamba community from where I come is about five million people WITHOUT a single public library. Ask the other tribes in Kenya whether they have public libraries and you shall get the shock of your life.
Kenya boasts 47 Counties. Ask which Country
Government has a public library and get the shock of your life. Check in the City of Nairobi how many public libraries it has if not two, for a population of four  million citizens. Go to many shopping centres in Kenya
looking for bookshops and get the surprise of your life.

The book and the gun are the prime powers that colonials employed to colonize us. Who is in control of the books that we read in Kenya today?
He who controls what you read is the one who controls your mind. Walk into any of the main few Kenyan bookshops and see the insignificant corner in which the few African books are placed, against the loud and
dominant publications from Europe. As of this stage, we are intellectually colonized by Europeans. The European publishing industry calls the shorts. We are economically and intellectually colonized beings.

RELATED: How to Write a Novel: Lesson 1

How far can we go in our cultural development without the hand of the government in promoting and subsidizing the book industry?How far can we go in our cultural development without the hand of the government in promoting and subsidizing the book industry?

Jomo Kenyatta Foundation, which is a grain of sand in the
intellectual desert of publishing industry in Kenya, has done Kenya proud with the little that it has published. It has published twenty-one titles from me, most of them children’s books. It has published my Broken Drum, the longest novel in Africa running to 1120 pages. If the Jomo Kenyatta Foundation had been given proper government support and vision, by now it would have become an international powerful publishing house. Now, instead of being uplifted, the government has smashed it.
The officials have been thrown out of the impressive property to be housed elsewhere for a different course. Now the property is occupied by the Examination Council. They have been told they should concentrate on
scholarships and the Foundation’s publications should be transferred to Kenya Literature Bureau, which the government has hinted it wants to privatize. All authors of the Foundation signed copyright contracts.
Going by the copyright contract, if the Foundation goes into liquidation, automatically the copyrights revert to the authors.

RELATED: Music for Our Healing

The book is the religion of modern life. The most civilized nations in the world publish and read books religiously.There is a grave and shocking story that the matter is going to Parliament as a bill in order to exclude the Jomo Kenyatta Foundation from publishing and give it another mission. Parliament will be used as a further slaughterhouse to intellectual development. Jomo
Kenyatta Foundation is now being killed, among the few ailing ones, when Kenya should have HUNDREDS of publishing houses to address the cultural transition. The government is killing the goose which lays intellectual
eggs. This is a social crime to the present and future generations that
should be met with the biggest public resistance. This is what has
driven me to announce preparation for organizing a mass through
demonstration against the government’s insensitivity. I can die for the
promotion of the book. I see the destruction of the Jomo Kenyatta
Foundation within the backstop of the Kenya Kwanza’s regime’s attack on
the Kenyatta farm, harassment of Mama Ngina Kenyatta, Uhuru Kenyatta and
other Kenyatta interests. The Jomo Kenyatta Foundation was a precious
gift to the nation.

RELATED:President Ruto Must Be Stopped From Destroying Kenya’s Publishing Industry

The population of the Akamba community from where I come is about 5 million people WITHOUT a single public library. Ask the other tribes in Kenya whether they have public libraries and you shall get the shock of your life.If one has to be the President in order to defend, promote African values, intellectual development through the book, then I should be counted an upcoming new-blood pharaoh presidential candidate. I am armed with the psychic assurance that the power of the people whose future
inspiration is threatened, and the power of our ancestral spirits will fund my campaign to success. God bless Kenyans; God bless Africans.