No Carpet on the Floor: Extracts from the Memoirs of Charles Granston Richards, Founding Director, East African Literature Bureau

Abstract

Most of the issues that relate to information, publishing and libraries in contemporary Africa go back further than is generally realised. Summing up the proceedings of a conference on textbook provision and library development that took place in Manchester in 1991, an Overseas Development Administration spokesman said that ‘the obvious and immediate needs are to develop the skills of indigenous writers, build vibrant local publishing industries, and allocate more funds overall to providing textbooks and library books.’ Yet this is what one organisation - the East African Literature Bureau - had been attempting to do from its inception in 1948. Speaking at a Unesco seminar at Ibadan in 1953 the Bureau's director said its fields of activity included: ‘(a) textbooks for schools; (b) general literature and the tutoring of African authors; (c) the publication of a magazine; (d) the development of libraries; (e) the establishment of a business section with a publishing fund to develop the sale of the Bureau's publications and assist in the general development of bookselling.’