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Uganda, Where a Book Can Cost a Month's Salary (bbc.com)
An anonymous reader shared with us a BBC report on Uganda, where books are unbelievably expensive to afford. The publication reports that it almost feels like a black market for people looking to purchase a book in the landlocked country in East Africa. A book Nothing Left To Steal by South African journalist Mzilikazi wa Afrika (less than $15 on Amazon.com), for instance, is selling in the country for 140,000 Ugandan shillings ($42). This might sound reasonable to most of us, but for a country with a poor economy, BBC reports, this amount can "buy a week's worth of groceries for a family." People, in fact, look for friends going on a foreign trip to help them buy books. Many books are simply not available to them, and the ones that are, they are too expensive in Kampala, the capital of Uganda. From the report: I did splurge once on a book by Guinea's revolutionary leader Ahmed Sekou Toure. It set me back $60 -- the pan-Africanist in me got the better of me that day. Waitresses in downtown Kampala barely earn $60 in a month.One of the encouraging things mentioned in the report is a growing desire among people to read books and wanting to share it with their friends and families despite the struggle. Someone named Rosey Sembatya has started the Malaika Children's Mobile Library. "My sister has four children now and I've been finding it very difficult to buy them books because they're quite expensive," she told BBC. The library is in the spare room of a two-bedroom house she rents. For a $30 annual fee, each child can borrow three books a week. It's an incredible read, and we urge you to read it in its entirety.
I don't know if Amazon still does it this way, but a long while back you could choose to randomly fill in items on someone else's wishlist.
Some kid in the Canary Islands had a list of books they wanted for Xmas, so I completed their list for them and Amazon shipped it without any details other than country of the recipient and basic profile info.
Being able to buy a book for someone who can't afford it is rewarding. And I bet they'd appreciate being able to create small neighborhood libraries of the gifts :)
Hackaday.io has a project to develop an automatic book scanner for Ethiopia. Uganda could use this to make books easily available.
https://hackaday.io/project/10...
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
When I was a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, we collected the extra textbooks the faculty received for review, etc. After a year of collecting, we had several hundred across many areas of computer science and statistics.
Each year, schools in countries like Uganda would be suggested and we shipped the books to the computer science department.
Additionally, many groups (ACM, IEEE, Elsvier, etc.) offer deep discounts to the libraries and sometimes individual in countries with a situation similar to Uganda.
Article didn't really say... just said that they are.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
What do they call a big mac in Uganda?
is selling in the country for 140,000 Ugandan shillings ($42). This might sound reasonable to most of us
What on earth? If your country happened to have a strong exchange rate against the US $ then the $15 on Amazon could be considered reasonable, but $42 is insane. I'm not surprised by the situation - things are often double or triple the normal price if you're poor, but is a very odd comment to make.
If you don't mind used books buy from Betterworldbooks.com. They are partnered with initiatives that promote literacy and donate lots of books.
http://www.betterworldbooks.com/info.aspx?f=partners
Just because the book is priced at $42 it does not mean that there is a demand for that book. Most likely Uganda will completely skip brick and mortar phase within enlightenment phase, called libraries.
English is an official language, together with the suahili language. Those who are inclined to learn, need to find a way to use internet. Once you find an internet, you have pretty much unlimited access to knowledge.
Books are expensive for the poor in the US also.
The maximum food stamp allotment for a single, non-disabled, non-elderly person in the US is $155 per month according to:
http://www.nlsa.us/resources/benefits/pb9_fs_calc_nonelderly.html
So here's a nice Calculus textbook sold on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0321954351/
The price? $256 new, or $120 used in "good" condition. Or you can rent it for the semester for the low price of $40.
Those poor folks should just get themselves an education. Right folks? Eh?
It's common for Ugandan day labourers to earn the equivalent of about 1 USD per day. At those salary levels, even 15 USD for something as exotic as a book, will never be considered.
Doesn't seem that bad when you consider the cost of college text books. With the average college student surviving off ramen and pizza, a text book could be the equivalent to an entire semester's "groceries"
Why is there such a price difference? And why has not a cunny capitalist set up a book (re)selling shop — ordering on Amazon for $15 and selling locally for $16?
Ok, maybe $1 is too optimistic, but $27 seems too much for a free country. And if it is not free, then they have a much bigger problem, than book-prices...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Books are expensive, and not only Ugandans suffer from it. Publisher's greed bites also people in "developed" countries. Do you think that books in US are cheap? Then you have never tried to buy academic books. A single book can costs much more than many US families or 4 or 5 spend weekly for food. On top of it many publishers publish new releases every semester with minor changes in the problems, and forbid professors from using older editions to kill used books market.
Libraries are often purging their collections. Some of those free books should end up in places like Uganda.
Books are just a symptom of the underlying problems in Uganda. Considering the country's ranking on the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business Index (near the bottom on several important factors), an average person getting books at a reasonable price is just one of many issues plaguing this country: http://www.doingbusiness.org/r... I don't think Amazon on-demand access is at the top of their long-term solutions list...
Don't you guys worry. Once Uncle Donald gets into office and starts printing money like crazy it will be books for everybody!
Just wait, you'll see. The Donald loves books... Probably more than any other person on the planet. Just ask him.
They just need to buy themselves a Kindle and then they will be able to get all the free books they could ever read!
I thought you were going to get to some good stuff when talking price, but alas not quite what I hoped for. All books are not, nor should they be, the same price. Basic High school economics will teach you about supply and demand and how it impacts pricing. Before you "but e-books" remember that the author/artist needs to be paid so a lower volume book will still cost more money even in electronic form. Tragedy and Hope in Hardback is massive, and has a price to match. It also cost more money to have that book shipped than a paperback, because it's massive.
Simple economics aside: I don't know that the problem they are seeing with book prices in this case is purely supply and demand pricing. On the surface it seems like people are attempting to inflate book prices to prevent people from knowledge. More elementary education is about how knowledge is power and people with power attempt to prevent people from learning so that they can maintain power.
Amazon is a company, not a Government. If they are going to sell in the country they need to follow the rules the Government provides. I think the term I'd look at is "damned if we do, damned if we don't" in that case.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
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Tell them to go to Project Gutenberg!
Then, either read on-screen, or print 4-up, double-sided, to take home.
There are already charitable programs in place that aim to bring e-libraries to these communities. I supported one not too long ago. Hopefully others might consider the same https://www.gofundme.com/wq9hws
I believe that if you can afford something, you should pay for it, but if you can't, you should pirate it without guilt. There's no reason to cut oneself off from art and culture out of some sense that you're taking something from someone when you aren't even a lost sale to begin with. Someone needs to put together some torrents of Ugandan/African books and spread them around. I know they probably don't have computers, but I would bet nearly every family has a smartphone.
... that makes Uganda poor. It can't be the genes of the people who live there, can it. I'm sure that if they move to a white country, which obviously has a 'magic' land mass, as soon as they set foot on the 'magic' soil, they'll start becoming more intelligent and will soon be exactly the same as white people!
That is what you believe, isn't it... since you claim "All races are the same", or "There's no such thing as race", or "Race is a social construct"...
How much did that signed first edition of "On the Origin of Species" go for?
Just look a little south of Florida to your neighbor Venezuela who actually has maritime borders with USA. Monthly income is around $15 for everyone except government officials many of whom have become tycoons, all with the american continent's general indiference.
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