UAE ranks 4th in Arab Reading Index

Dubai - The Index found that Arabs read an average of 35 hours and 16 books per year

The UAE ranks fourth among 22 Arab nations surveyed for the Arab Reading Index, according to statistics unveiled at the Knowledge Summit on Tuesday.

Reading Index statistics show that readers in the UAE spend an average of 51 hours a year reading, with each reader going through 24 books every year. Of those books, 18 are in Arabic, with the other eight being in foreign languages. An average of 15 books are read extracurricularly or for reasons other than work.

The UAE's overall Reading Index score of 82 percent fell only behind Lebanon (90), Egypt (89), and Morocco (87).

Across the region, the Index found that Arabs read an average of 35 hours and 16 books per year.

Jamal bin Huwaireb, Managing Director of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation, said that the results of the survey - which had 148,000 respondents - should forever dispel the "illogical" results of previous studies, one of which claimed that Arabs read only six minutes and a quarter of a page per year.

"I took part in so many seminars and discussions and I remember how depressed I was when I heard those statistics," he noted. "We were just using this information without knowing its source. These statistics came out and prevailed in the Arab World and made us all frustrated as Arabs."

Dr Najoua Ghriss, Professor at the Higher Institute of Education and Continuous Training in Tunisia, said that the figure for the number of hours spent reading across the region was skewed by a few very underperforming countries.

"Countries like Djibouti, Somalia and Comoros had very low reading hours annually. For example, Egypt had the highest number of hours, with 64 hours spent reading annually, but Somalia had eight hours annually," she said. "That's why the average was lowered."

Ghriss added that the Reading Index is needed to "take social and economic development to a higher level."

"We can't envision a community or society acquiring knowledge without being a reading community," she noted, adding that the Reading Index "is a main tool that helps us diagnose the situation and build the strategies to improve."

"This initiative has caused a reading buzz," she said. "We need such tools."

Print more books, publishers told

In his remarks, Jamal bin Huwaireb noted that - compared to places such as Japan and the United States - books are not as widespread, which makes their availability problematic, leading many to turn towards e-reading.

"In Japan, people to get to buy books, which are affordable and widespread," he said. "But in the Arab World, purchasing power is lower and books are beyond the reach of many for logistical reasons, so they aren't everywhere in the same way. So, we see people reading digital, rather than paperback copies."

Additionally, bin Huwaireb called on Arab publishing houses to do more to make books available and affordable for people throughout the region.

"Publishing houses are not performing their responsibility. If not enough copies of a book are published, and we don't increase those (numbers) and make the price suitable, it means that the coverage (sic) of a book is not enough," he said.

bernd@khaleejtimes.com

Overall scores in Arab Reading Index:

1-Lebanon: 90 percent

2- Egypt: 89 percent

3- Morocco: 87 percent

4- UAE: 82 percent

5- Jordan: 71 percent

6- Tunisia: 70 percent

7- Qatar: 64 percent

8- KSA: 63 percent

9- Bahrain: 58 percent

10- Palestine: 54 percent

11-Algeria: 51 percent

12- Oman: 48 percent

13 -Kuwait: 44 percent

14 - Sudan: 43 percent

15 -Syria: 39 percent

16- Iraq: 36 percent

17- Yemen: 29 percent

18 -Libya: 23 percent

19 - Mauritania: 18 percent

19 - Djibouti: 12 percent

21 - Comoros: 8 percent

22 - Somalia: 3 percent

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