The Library Doors Are Open Nobody Is Walking In

Walking into most public libraries in Ghana at a typical weekday afternoon yields a familiar scene: a librarian at the desk, rows of quiet shelves, and perhaps a handful of JHS students cramming for an exam as if there's no other choice. Nevertheless, the young person on the trotro, walking to the market, or before class begins is more likely to be engrossed in their phone, doing what most of their age group is doing: scrolling.

This observation isn't new, as Ghanaian officials have been remarking on it for over a year. Education Minister Haruna Iddrisu recently told the Public Accounts Committee that the country's reading habit has been declining, contrasting it with his observations of people spending their mornings reading in other countries. At the inaugural Ghana Literacy Fair, officials described the situation as a full-blown reading crisis, with national and international assessments indicating that many Ghanaian children fail to develop basic literacy skills during their early school years.

Tourism, Culture, and Creative Arts Minister Dzifa Gomashie has called for a concerted national effort to reignite reading among the young. The Ghana Library Authority has publicly acknowledged the decline in library usage.

The conversation surrounding this issue often skips over a crucial question: why is this happening, and why have the current responses seemingly been ineffective? The straightforward answer is that young people are indeed on their phones now, but this is merely a symptom rather than the root cause. Smartphones didn't create distraction; they merely made it more portable, constant, and optimised to hold attention through algorithmic means, far surpassing the capabilities of a paperback.

While it's emotionally satisfying to blame the smartphone, it's strategically useless as there's no plan to take them away from an entire generation, nor should there be.

The more honest question is why reading has such little appeal compared to a phone's allure. This has less to do with willpower and more with infrastructure. Ghana's public library network currently consists of approximately 139 libraries nationwide. For a population of over 30 million people spread across 16 regions and hundreds of districts, this represents a thin and uneven distribution - urban libraries are frequently close by, while those in rural and peri-urban areas may have never stepped foot in a library.

When access to books demands effort, cost, or a lengthy journey, and access to a screen requires none of these, the result isn't a mystery; it's basic behavioural economics. Reading isn't losing to TikTok because TikTok is more compelling than a great story - it's losing because a great story is so much harder to come by. The current responses treat a structural problem as if it were a motivational one.

Recent efforts include a Holiday Reading Challenge asking students to read six books during a school break, a one-day Literacy Fair with a reading marathon and storytelling sessions, and ministerial statements urging coordinated national efforts. These initiatives are well-intentioned, and those implementing them, from the Ghana Library Authority's regional librarians to civil society partners like Brighter Future Africa, are genuinely working with limited resources.

However, these are events. Campaigns. Seasonal pushes. A reading culture built entirely out of these events is a reading culture that thrives for six weeks during the summer and fades the rest of the year, as nothing changes in the daily infrastructure of a child's life once the campaign ends.

In contrast, what has built reading habits in countries that officials point to when lamenting what they see abroad is the presence of embedded, seemingly unglamorous structural features - a library or bookshelf within easy reach of nearly every school, dedicated reading periods built into the timetable, and most importantly, adults visibly reading in front of children, both at home and in the classroom.

Simply meeting the screen with more content isn't the solution; it's a losing battle. However, there is a promising shift where the Ghana Library Authority is considering using technology itself to engage younger readers, rather than treating phones as the enemy. This is the right instinct and deserves to be central, not an afterthought.

A teenager who wouldn't walk to a library after school might read on their phone during the twenty idle minutes they spend on it daily, if the content is there in a format they actually choose. Fighting for a child's attention against a screen is a losing proposition, but doing so through the same screen is at least a fair fight.

To move the needle, none of the individual interventions currently on the table, such as readathons, fairs, and ministerial statements, are inherently wrong. What's missing is permanence. A national reading period embedded in the school day, rather than shoehorned onto holidays, corporate partnerships adopting under-resourced libraries with sustained funding, a serious, funded push to put reading content on the platforms young people already use, and a basic, unglamorous expansion of the physical library network itself.

The libraries aren't failing because no one in Ghana wants young people to read; they're failing because access to books is so hard to come by when compared to the effortless access to screens.