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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?
Article didn't really say... just said that they are.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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.
I think programs like this are great, and we should encourage charity for these folks, but I've always been worried that the food/books/money/etc that is sent never makes it to the people that need it the most. How do we know that this stuff is actually making it to the schools, and not being used to line the pockets of a warlord or politician who receives the books and then just sells them?
Please keep in mind that I'm not trying to single out Africa....this could very well be true of any charity on the other side of the world, where you don't have direct contact with the people there.
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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.
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.
Maybe open books are the way to go. Here's a book for $13/semester (3 semester course; $50). Buy the used ones off Amazon, and you can be down to single digits.
It kind of goes with the post above about the book scanners; open books and internet and whatnot is great, but not everyone has access to a screen for reading for hours on end, and sometimes screens just suck for reading.
One thing I've noticed in some of my research on textbooks is that it seems a lot of the cost goes into publishing with shiny, thick, colorful pages. My Shigley's from the '80's very closely matches in content with my Shigley's from 2014. Verbatim, including images/figures. The major change? Physical size, some updates on a few newer methods/materials, and color and gloss and a fancy cover!!1!!1 Oh, and new copyright.
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...
The ones that I particularly hate are the books that are written by the prof who teaches the class....the prices for those border on extortion.
The best classes I've taken are the ones that didn't require a book ;-)
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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.
I think programs like this are great, and we should encourage charity for these folks, but I've always been worried that the food/books/money/etc that is sent never makes it to the people that need it the most. How do we know that this stuff is actually making it to the schools, and not being used to line the pockets of a warlord or politician who receives the books and then just sells them?
That is quite simple. Find a local reliable partner (there are lot of middle class Ugandans that set up projects for the less well to do), and make sure their books are checked regularly by a reliable third party. Basically, the same way subsidies work in the Western world.
First, is English taught and understood there?
Ever heard of this site called Wikipedia?
The true unreasonable part is the past inflation that made their base unit of currency need so many to buy a book, even at such a high price relative to US prices. 140K to buy a book means probably even 100 doesn't buy anything.
Yes, you can read the classics for free via Gutenberg.org. But you can't easily follow along with your {calculus,physics,chemistry,pde, ...} class without a copy of the current textbook.
Yes, you can learn a lot without spending a dime but you'll have a much harder time finding a comparable job or getting into a good grad school without a college diploma.
Yes, I've seen many copies of "50 Shades of Grey" lying in the trash, free for the taking. But not everybody wants to read crap.
I had a prof that used his textbook in class. He gave each student a free copy. Years later I, and a number of classmates, repaid the favor with a nice donation to the department to fund scholarships and pay forward.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Another option is an organization that lets you sponsor an overseas child. The organization might have an option for you to donate to a community project, such as stocking a library.
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$42 AU for a book is a bargain in Australia (Doubly so if it is a recent edition of an IT reference variety). There is a huge markup on books over here despite our dollar being relatively close to the US (1 US -> 72 cents AU).
Same here in New Zealand, so when we buy our books from Amazon and similar, cue the whining from the local booksellers about unfair competition.
Hmm... It's probably not that expensive to ship a container. I've a buddy in the Norfolk, VA area who is sort of in the business so I might be able to get a free/donated container. I've shipped a Honda to Japan and back for restoration but I'm pretty sure a container full of books will weigh a lot more. Still, it can't be that bad. If you ever actually get a container's worth of books and really want to ship them there, I would be willing to help with that.
Note: I've been to a few African countries. You're gonna need bribe money - even for books. I also have no idea how you get a container from the coast all the way in to Uganda. I'm sure someone knows how to accomplish it. But yeah, if you ever seriously get a container of books then I'll help you get them as far as the coast. Someone else can help the rest of the way. (We can call it the Slashdot Literary Express.)
It can't be *that* expensive to ship a container to Africa from a major port on the East Coast. I've spent money on far more stupid things. Much, much more stupid things... Also, it's gonna take bribe money - I'm not kidding about that. It's partially morbid curiosity - how does one get a container full of books to Uganda? It's probably less than 10k to ship the container so you don't really need "a couple of rich dudes" to do this. If you're serious and want to do some leg work, the email address works. I'll be going back through the VA area at the end of this week or the start of next week so I can stop in and beg for a container for you - he's got a yard full of 'em. (No, not that kind of yard. He owns a small trucking company.)
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Used copies of that book are potentially tainted with bodily fluids. Nobody wants to even touch a used copy.
Tell them to go to Project Gutenberg!
Then, either read on-screen, or print 4-up, double-sided, to take home.
Ship to Mombasa and hit the road from there. It's only two lanes, but it is in good condition (at least in Kenya). Mombasa-Nairobi-Kampala. I imagine the problems come at the borders. Useful tip I learned from an adventure forum: find out who the local distributors for Coca-Cola are and ask them. Stuff is available almost everywhere on the planet.
An Idi Amin.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
There used to be a "book rate" that was subsidised for book shipping. It may have been discontinued.
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.
Good idea! I'd only be paying to ship a container. I've not got time to deal with the rest of that. As much as I'd like to, I've previous commitments coming up. I'm getting ready to head back to Maine as I'm not getting permission to go to Cuba. That was a hope and why I stayed here this long. (I already bought a ton of USB drives so that I could leave on a moment's notice.)
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I'm thinking post will be a bit for a whole shipping container's worth. Someone's sent me an email so we'll see what comes of it. I can just throw a few bucks at it - I don't have time to do much more than that.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
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