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Education Books

Uganda, Where a Book Can Cost a Month's Salary (bbc.com) 102

Posted by msmash from the let-there-be-light dept.
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.
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Uganda, Where a Book Can Cost a Month's Salary

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  • Ugandans should set up wish lists (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Cruciform ( 42896 ) on Monday May 09, 2016 @04:46PM (#52078823) Homepage

    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 :)

    • Re:Ugandans should set up wish lists (Score:5, Informative)

      by Incadenza ( 560402 ) on Monday May 09, 2016 @05:23PM (#52079053)
      That would work if Uganda's postal service was reliable. Unfortunately it is not. When I was there in 2014 I tried to find a post office to be able to send some cards home. Nobody even knew where it was, the basic reply was “Why would you use the postal service when you can use the Internet?”.
      • That and if books are that valuable, many would never reach their intended recipients. I suppose you'd still get more books into the country though.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by icebike ( 68054 )

          Look, every small town in the US has a Friends of the Library that collects and recycles used book. We could relieve them of their unsold inventory, load them into C5 Cargo planes and air drop them into every little village. When the book sellers complain, back a dump truck up and bury them in free books to sell.

          The price would drop. Our land fills would thank us.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Paperbacks are $6-15 in the US.

        • Jesus, paperbacks are basically trash in the US.

          This may come as a shock to you, but ... baring in mind this is a story about a COUNTRY (you might need to check a dictionary for what that means) which is NOT part of the USA (doubt that will e in your dictionary, but it's a real concept). And, astonishing as it may seem, things are different there.

          Do you have any gay friends, relatives, siblings or lovers? If they went to Uganda, they'd be criminals, simply for being gay. And that is the law of the country,

    • Ugandan commerce has a -severe- shrinkage problem.

      Shrinkage is the difference between the number of items entering the supply chain and the number of items sold at retail. It's the total count of items lost, broken or stolen before they can be sold.

      The $42 price reflects the two copies that vanish before the third reaches a paying customer. A -severe- shrinkage problem.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by GbrDead ( 702506 )

        This means that people in Uganda do have access to cheap books. Just not honest people...

        • Not necessarily. They steal a bunch of packages hoping for valuables. The books end up in the garbage.

  • Join this book scanner project (Score:5, Informative)

    by mspohr ( 589790 ) on Monday May 09, 2016 @04:47PM (#52078835)

    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... [hackaday.io]

    • Uganda could use this to make books easily available.

      "easily" meaning "easily if you have internet access with a screen large enough to read on, and electricity to power that screen" ?

      All of which are rare, expensive commodities in Africa in general. True, East Africa has better access to the internet than much of Africa since they landed a major pipe in 2010. But that is still several times average monthly salaries, actual ACCESS to the internet is still an expensive thing.

      Don't believe me? Try setting u

  • Article didn't really say... just said that they are.

    • The state's vested interest. *Ignorance is strength*.

    • Re:Why are books so expensive there anyways? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by rasmusbr ( 2186518 ) on Monday May 09, 2016 @05:32PM (#52079143)

      It's a safe bet that it is due to low demand. You need a lot of readers who read a lot of books in order to get economies of scale in a book import and distribution business.

      It probably doesn't help that Uganda is a landlocked country with poor freight infrastructure. Imagine how expensive books would be in rural inland USA if there were no highways, railways or airports.

      • I'm imagining how expensive food would be in dense urban areas of the USA if there were no highways, railways or airports.

      • It's a safe bet that it is due to low demand. You need a lot of readers who read a lot of books in order to get economies of scale in a book import and distribution business.

        It probably doesn't help that Uganda is a landlocked country with poor freight infrastructure. Imagine how expensive books would be in rural inland USA if there were no highways, railways or airports.

        No you don't.

        Libraries around the world are "donating" books to charities. Books that are not checked-out often—That is a poor metric. I have been to book fairs and bought "$3 grocery bag of random books", and been happily surprised to discover works that I'd never been aware of.

        Cost is only the flight of a cargo airplane full of these otherwise soon-to-be-incinerated books. Library bindings. Just fly a full payload of discarded books in. The people desperate to read anything will discover the ge

    • That's exactly what I was wondering. They appear to be victims of circular logic; note the quote from the publishing company's marketing droid re: after spending years in school with textbooks [learning to read], no one wants to read.
      Publishing companies rack up massive profits on textbooks students are required to purchase, not so much on other books. If the owners of that publishing company have good connections then likely they keep out competition and don't have much interest in low profitability produc

    • Most of the pictures in the article showed Ugandan kids reading English language books, so I'd say English is spoken.

      There's no indication in the article why books cost so much though. Government policy? Retail monopoly?

      It's not actually terribly informative.

  • 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 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 t

      • On the surface it seems like people are attempting to inflate book prices to prevent people from knowledge.

        Right. That makes perfect sense. Much more effective than just banning them.

        Can you tell me what subversive things The Very Hungry Caterpillar contains, or have you not had it read to you yet?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Just because the book is priced at $42 it does not mean that there is a demand for that book.

      I don't even see where that's "cheap" - if it's $15 in the US, then that's a reasonable price. I certainly may buy it at $15, but I certainly won't at $42. Hell, I generally have to sit on books that cost over $10 for a little while. Yes, I can afford it, but if it's expensive I either budget it or I see if I really want it.

      So if I find a $42 book too expensive, why would a poorer Ugandan find it cheaper?

  • Books are expensive for the poor in the US also.

    The maximum food stamp allotment for a single, non-disabled, non-elderly person in the US is $155 per month according to:

    http://www.nlsa.us/resources/benefits/pb9_fs_calc_nonelderly.html [www.nlsa.us]

    So here's a nice Calculus textbook sold on Amazon:

    http://www.amazon.com/dp/0321954351/ [amazon.com]

    The price? $256 new, or $120 used in "good" condition. Or you can rent it for the semester for the low price of $40.

    Those poor folks should just get themselves an education

    • Maybe open books are the way to go. Here's [apexcalculus.com] 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,

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • 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.

  • less than $15 on Amazon.com, for instance, is selling in the country for 140,000 Ugandan shillings ($42)

    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...

    • Because you haven't priced in the security issues in Uganda. Once you throw in the high crime rates, the high corruption rates, the terrorist attacks, the porous borders along DRC and Sudan and finally a literacy rate of around 60% you start to see why there is such a markup on physically bringing books, or any other physical product, into the country.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by mi ( 197448 )

        Once you throw in the high crime rates, the high corruption rates, the terrorist attacks, the porous borders...

        Several people have already mentioned shipping container-fulls of books to Uganda as charity — so shipping must be working...

        And so does retail, because — according to the write-up — food remains affordable. Unless someone powerful considers most books to be "haram" [wikipedia.org], I don't think those problems you describe explain such a giant mark-up for literature in particular...

        • It is because books are a luxury item in poor countries. Median monthly salary for Uganda is about US$90, so at US$15 that makes up a massive % of their salary. The US median salary is $4300 per month, so if you were to price them equally you would be spending around $700 for a book. If books were 700 each the number you could sell would be dramatically lower, meaning your costs needs to be spread over a smaller number of sales.

          The next part is that luxury items are at a higher risk of theft as they have

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by mi ( 197448 )

            Median monthly salary for Uganda is about US$90, so at US$15 that makes up a massive % of their salary

            This may mean, the demand for books is too low for a reseller to stay in business. But TFA seems to imply, the demand does exist... That said, TFA is by a journalist, who may simply be ignorant of Economics...

            My original point stands — the reported near-triple mark-up is a bonanza for a capitalist. If Uganda is sufficiently free to allow book imports (as well as local printing), the prices ought to c

            • I get where you are coming from. But there isn't a demand for books in Uganda that can be exploited. There may be a significant desire to own books but this is materially different from economic demand. In this instance I am saying the journalist is a fool.

              As for free to allow imports, I think that depends on your definition. Their infrastructure sucks, corruption is high, and transport risks are huge. You aren't going to be able to import books on a 1 by 1 basis, TNT isn't going to be a suitable deliv

              • Re: (Score:1)

                by mi ( 197448 )

                As for free to allow imports, I think that depends on your definition. Their infrastructure sucks, corruption is high, and transport risks are huge. You aren't going to be able to import

                That means, all imports are expensive in the country — and the books, however much I like them, would not be a special priority.

                May as well be lamenting the high prices of Ferraris over there...

        • Several people have already mentioned shipping container-fulls of books to Uganda

          People have mentioned building colonies on Mars. Doing it's a different thing.

          You do know Uganda's landlocked, don't you?

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by mi ( 197448 )

            People have mentioned building colonies on Mars. Doing it's a different thing.

            Don't be silly — people mentioned having shipped books to Uganda. It can be done...

            • Perhaps you could link to them. The closest I can see is one near the top mentioning "countries like Uganda" which could mean pretty much anything from Australia to Samoa.

              Just admit you decided it was due to "OMG gubbimentz" and didn't even bother thinking before spouting off your libertardian shite.

    • 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...

      Yes, $1 would be overly optimistic.

      In the US alone, Amazon usually charges $3.99 for shipping a $15 book.

      I don't know what shipping costs from the US to Uganda, or from Europe to Uganda, but I assume it has to cost more than $4 (unless you ship by boat through third or fourth class mail, which may take several months). Also since most peoples homes in Uganda are on streets with no name and have no number on their house, I assume that will add to the cost if they have to go through these private intermediari

      • And of course, the customer in France would get really upset when that happened and would rate me poorly if I didn't eat the cost and try again. And of course, the customer would rate me negatively as well if I did declare the full value and insured things properly without paying the customs and tax, because in the end the customer would get hit with a large customs and tax fee upon delivery.

        It's complaints like those that lead me to read through the negative eBay reviews and not just look at the percenta

  • 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.

    • Interesting; is it really true that the publishers can forbid professors to use older editions or do the professors just cave because they want their free professional copies of the publisher's books?

      • Those who use online teaching resources provided by publishers (problems for exams and homeworks) have no choice. Of course the contents of the book is modified in such a way that the previous, or international editions are useless. Only the version matching the most recent edition is available and the professor can't change it. For offline resources like solution guides, there are copyright-based restrictions, but I'm not familiar with them only aware of existence of such issue, so I'm not going to comment

      • Interesting; is it really true that the publishers can forbid professors to use older editions or do the professors just cave because they want their free professional copies of the publisher's books?

        Publishers can't forbid Professors from using an older Edition of a book for, say, Calculus, which hasn't changed for a few centuries. But, what they can do is stop printing the older Editions, making them effectively unavailable for an entire class. A Professor cannot choose an old Edition, and hope that each student is able to search the web to find a copy.

        The only Edition available in the University Book Store will be the current one. A Professor requiring something outside this system could be seen a

  • 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... [doingbusiness.org] I don't think Amazon on-demand access is at the top of their long-term solutions list...

  • Don't you guys worry. Once Uncle Donald gets into office and starts printing money like crazy it will be books for everybody!

    Just wait, you'll see. The Donald loves books... Probably more than any other person on the planet. Just ask him.

  • They have internet? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Sir Holo ( 531007 ) on Monday May 09, 2016 @11:22PM (#52081073)

    Tell them to go to Project Gutenberg [gutenberg.org]!

    Then, either read on-screen, or print 4-up, double-sided, to take home.

  • 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.

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