Port Harcourt is World Book Capital 2014

by - 22:59

Love it! Port Harcourt, home to some amazing authors (as well as poets and playrights) like Gabriel Okara, Elechi Amadi, Kaine Agary, A. Igoni Barrett, as well as Ola Rotimi and Ken Saro-Wiwa, was named World Book Capital for 2014. Eleven cities put in a bid (Oxford was one of them) but according to UNESCO, Port Harcourt was chosen for the quality of the programme it presented. It focused on youth and the impact it will have on improving Nigeria's culture of books, reading, writing, and publishing to improve literacy rates. 


Each year World Book Capital is given  by UNESCO to a city which has committed itself to promoting books and reading, and to highlight the vitality of literary creativity. According to UNESCO, the nomination does not imply any  financial prize, but it is an exclusively symbolic acknowledgement of the best programme dedicated to books an reading.


Port Harcourt is the 14th city (and the 2nd African city - the first was Alexandria in 2002) to be designated World Book Capital. Past World Book Capitals were Madrid (2001), Alexandria (2002), New Dehli (2003), Antwerp (2004), Montreal (2005), Turin (2006), Bogota (2007), Amsterdam (2008), Beirut (2009), Ljubljana (2010), Buenos Aires (2011), Yerevan (2012) and Bangkok (2013).


Port Harcourt will be World Book Capital from April 23 2014 - April 22 2015, and you can find out more here. 
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