President Nana Akufo-Addo has announced that Accra, Ghana’s capital city, has been named as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) world book capital for the year 2023.
Following the evaluation of the World Book Capital Advisory Committee, UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay named Accra (Ghana) as the UNESCO World Book Capital for 2023.Following Guadalajara (Mexico) in 2022, Accra was chosen for its strong emphasis on young people and their potential to contribute to Ghana’s culture and wealth. Accra’s proposed program aims to engage these young people through the power of books as an effective way of skilling up the next generation.
The city proposed to the committee a broad program that targets illiterate marginal groups such as women, youth, migrants, street children, and people with disabilities. To foster a reading culture, measures to be implemented include strengthening school and community infrastructure as well as institutional support for lifelong learning. By promoting the publishing industry and other creative industries, the program hopes to encourage professional skill development and thus stimulate the country’s socioeconomic transformation.
Mobile libraries will be introduced to reach marginalized groups, workshops will be held to promote reading and writing books in different Ghanaian languages, skills and training centers will be established for unemployed youth, and competitions will be organized to showcase Ghanaian arts and culture and promote inclusivity.
Accra’s application also includes a strong human rights component, with the goal of raising public awareness about freedom of information and expression, building on its own promotion of these rights as well as its participation in World Press Freedom Day.
