Promoting writing to excellence

As a published author, I pride in the profession, that like most arts have helped to preserve history. On thing I lament though is that African's have in the previous past not been cardinal at writing their own history. Most history books I read when I was in school must have been authored by our counter natives of Europe, who had mastered the art of writing and made education a bench mark to civilization. Although Africa has about 54 states on it's continent, some states have obviously been more advanced in participating in preserving their own history; Egypt for instance has been ahead of most African states in that regard, whilst in the South most history as in the eastern parts of the world was preserved in drawings or carvings found in the caves. Although I dislike categorizing the human race into regions it is imperative to state that another notable place the resonates with history is Timbuktu or Timbuctoo which is the capital of the Timbuktu region of Mali. 'In its Golden Age, the town's numerous Islamic scholars and extensive trading network made possible an important book trade: together with the campuses of the Sankore Madrasah, an Islamic university, this established Timbuktu as a scholarly centre in Africa.' Wikipedia the free encyclopedia. So how do we as an African continent embrace and promote African writers to excellence? That is the question that I am posing to you. There are indeed different genre of writers from Scholar, to fiction and children's books. With the rich population in Africa, we should be one of the richest continents as far as this industry is concerned, since we could boost a wider readership. Therefore since our African writers continue to struggle to sell the literature that is produced one from a glance has to come up with the root causes to our problem. For instance, in South Africa is an author sells three thousand books then they have done well!! on average. Obviously more needs to be done, there is not enough hype about reading our own books or even reading- the bridge to civilization is education, and education to be attained one has to read- our levels of illiteracy still remains very high. Although this may not be the root cause of our failure -if I may put it that way- to create the best sellers- we as a continent are not doing enough to create unconventional avenues of employment. If we look at it that way, although writing is an art and a skill, it crates a lot of wealth in the process. We have the author- the publishers- the printing companies- the designers-editors-the distributors and the book stores. Whilst we continue to stumble in poverty, we need to embrace writers and help them help create jobs. So the next time you feel like reading a book why not promote African writing excellence. Let us celebrate and enjoy the culture of reading and in fact thank you for reading this article which is just the tip of the ice-burg our next blog will be about competing on the international market. Africa Independent Magazine is an Africa founded company based in South Africa whose catch phrase is 'changing the mindset.'