MOGADISHU (Halbeeg News) – The annual Mogadishu Book Fair, which opened its doors to the public on Wednesday will be concluded today.
Thousands of book enthusiasts have attended the literary festival which was officially opened by the country’s deputy prime minister, Mr. Mahdi Guled Khadar.
Speaking to the participants at the three-day book fair, Mr. Khadar underscored the importance of inculcating a culture of reading in the country.
“Knowledge should be our guiding principle; we should use our minds creatively. Writing, reading, and literary competitions, as well as creative ideas, are a prerequisite for development,” he said.
The Fourth annual Mogadishu Book Fair invited more than 36 guests and twenty renowned poets from the Middle East, Asia, Europe, North America, the East and Horn of Africa region are attending the three-day festival.
Over fifty new book are on display at the Book Fair, while more than two-thousand books on 178 different topics are being exhibited.
Among the books with the new titles are Over ten story and reading books tent for children.
At least 80-children are attending the fair and interacting with storytellers and writers of children’s books.
Mohamed Diini, the fair’s organizer said Book Fair is all about is to promote literacy.
“Reading not just for schooling purposes but reading for fun, reading for pleasure, promoting anything that is related to knowledge, scholarship and uniting authors and professors and poets and playwrights, Somalis and non-Somalis, giving them a chance to network,” he said, “And benefit from each other so that it will contribute, as I say every year, to the building of the new Somalia that will be better tomorrow than today.”
The fair is another demonstration of the atmosphere of peace and stability being enjoyed in Somalia, as a result of gains made on the security front
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