On Saturday at Kerr Sering, while much of the country was scrolling, a small but powerful gathering was reading.
The numbers in this story should make us all stop and think. In a country where many schools still have empty library shelves and where children share tattered textbooks, this is not charity. This is nation-building.
The partnership between a Gambian-founded NGO established in 2014 and a UK charity, Book Aid International, shows what happens when access is taken seriously. Access to books should not be limited by where a person lives or their socio-economic circumstances.
That is the heart of the matter. A child who cannot read well cannot pass science, cannot understand mathematics, cannot fill a job application. We complain about poor performance in WASSCE, about youth unemployment, about lack of critical thinking. Yet how often do we ask: does that child have a book at home? Does his school have a library?
Unique Foundation’s work answers that question with action, not just talk. From lower basic to senior secondary schools they have put quality, new books — not discarded leftovers — into Gambian hands.
Their classroom library project with the Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education and The Gambia Teachers’ Union is particularly commendable. Instead of building expensive central libraries that children rarely visit, they took books into the classroom where learning happens every day.
This is the model government must adopt and scale.
To continue this momentum we encourage them to priorities three things. First, the Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education must institutionalize classroom libraries.
Second, parents and communities must reclaim reading culture. A spelling competition and reading session, should not be a once-a-year event. Let every community bantaba have a small book corner. Let phones be put down for one hour a day for reading.
Third, other NGOs and the private sector should emulate Book Aid and Unique Foundation. Corporate social responsibility should not only be football jerseys and end-of-year rice. Invest in books. Books outlive tournaments.
In the testimony of students who attended the foundation remedial classes, we hear the real impact: lives being changed quietly, without noise.
The Gambia cannot become a knowledge-based economy on empty shelves.
We commend the foundation and its stakeholders. But more importantly, we challenge ourselves: when last did you buy a book for a Gambian child who is not your own?
That is how a reading nation is built.