"This World Bank study discusses secondary textbook and school library availability in Africa, its cost and financing, and its distribution and publishing. The study’s objective was to analyze the issues and provide some options and strategies for improvement. Reforms are urgently required in the secondary school systems of most African countries in order to: (i) reduce the number of textbooks and reference books required by secondary education curricula; (ii) reduce the unit costs of textbooks; (iii) increase the target book life thus increasing cost amortization and reducing annual textbook fees/budgets; (iv) increase the financing allocated to textbook provision from either government or parents, and (v) ensure that curricula change does not make expensive materials redundant too early or too often. The authors of the study believe that if a reliable market exists local publishing can develop to service it, even in direct competition with multinationals; and that the market does not necessarily have to be large, but that the critical factor is predictability. If publishers are confident that funding will be available, from whatever source, year after year, then local publishing will emerge to serve that market. This, it is argued, is perhaps most clearly demonstrated in Botswana where a tiny but reliable and reasonably predictable secondary school sector has five competing approved textbooks in some secondary subjects." (Hans M. Zell, Publishing, Books & Reading in Sub-Saharan Africa, 3d ed. 2008, nr. 2556) "This study is based on research on secondary textbook and school library provision in Botswana, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Togo, as well as existing recent country reports on textbook provision and an extensive desk research. Considerable variations exist in Sub-Saharan African textbook requirements needed to meet secondary curriculum specifications just as significant differences exist between and within countries in regard to the average price of recommended textbooks. Some countries have no approved textbooks list. This study aims to discuss the textbook situation in Sub-Saharan Africa with a special focus on secondary textbook availability, cost and financing, distribution and publishing, as well as, the status of school libraries. Its objective is to analyze the issues in secondary textbook and school library provision and to provide some options and strategies for improvement." (Back cover)