Abu Dhabi: The year 2016 has been declared the year of reading in the UAE to create a generation of book lovers and consolidate the UAE’s position as a global capital for culture and knowledge.

It was declared in December last year by President His Highness Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

Shaikh Khalifa stressed that the UAE is now on the right track for innovation and will reap its fruits soon.

“We gave our directives that the year 2016 be the year of reading because reading is the basic skill for a new generation of scientists, intellectual, researchers and innovators,” the President said.

He added: “Establishment of a knowledge-based economy and changing the path of development is based on science and innovation. This requires nurturing a generation of readers and fully aware of developments happening around them in the world as well as of the best ideas and the latest theories.”

His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, said on his Twitter page the country was aiming to become a beacon of knowledge, “just as Baghdad, Andalusia and other civilisations seeking enlightenment were”.

However, Shaikh Mohammad warned of the “reading crisis in the Arab world” and the urgent need to rectify it.

Statistics recently issued by the Arab Thought Foundation elucidate the severity of this crisis. According to the study, the annual average reading rate for an Arab child is six minutes compared with a 12,000 minute average for children in the West. To put it in perspective, for every six minutes spent reading by an Arab child, a child of similar age in the west will have been reading for 200 hours.

In September last year, Shaikh Mohammad launched the Arab Reading Challenge (ARC) in a bid to encourage students in the Arab world to make reading a part of their daily routine. The ARC aims for a million students in the Arab world to read 50 million books, which will be achieved through an integrated system for supervising students throughout the academic year.

The ARC will provide cash prizes and incentives to students, families and supervisors who participate. The total value of the incentives will be $3 million (approximately Dh11 million).

In October last year, Shaikh Mohammad signed an agreement with the Court of the Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister to support the Arab Reading Challenge initiative and supply a million books to all schools in the UAE.

In November last year, President His Highness Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan announced the adoption of the Science, Technology and Innovation’s Higher Policy. The plan foresees an investment of over Dh300 billion with a goal to build a vibrant knowledge-based economy in the UAE.

 

Fast facts

• UAE’s Science, Technology and Innovation’s Policy foresees an investment of over Dh300 billion with a goal to build a vibrant knowledge-based economy.

• ‘Arab Reading Challenge,’ the largest Arab project to encourage students in the Arab world to read, with more than a million students committing to read 50 million extra-curricular books during every academic year.

• More than 160,000 students from 828 schools took part in the challenge, with participants managing to read a total of 5 million books in the school year.

• The average reading time for an Arab child is six minutes a year compared with 12,000 minutes in the West, according to the Arab Thought Foundation’s Arab Report for Cultural Development.

• The reading rate of an Arab individual is a quarter of a page a year compared with 11 books in the US and seven books in the UK, according to a study conducted by the Supreme Council of Culture in Egypt.