The founder of the new avenue, Fidelis Ncube stated that their mandate is to hasten Botswana to be a knowledge-based economy like it has been the country’s target all these years. And not only work towards being a knowledge-based country but also at the same time, improve the lives of the authors by selling them internationally. “The idea behind the new Continental Book Fair Botswana is to ameliorate the publishing industry and develop it in a manner that publishers and everyone involved in the publishing industry can make their own money and live the life they want to,” he said. Ncube highlighted that the new CBFB will improve the experiences of authors by simply promoting the authors and their flair so it is shared with a larger audience. “As the name suggests, we plan on being continental, we are starting with Africa. This will really do wonders for the writers as they will be able to sell their works to places that cannot easily be reached,” he said.
The founder said CBFB will also contribute immensely to some of the battles that the country finds itself engulfed by. “We want to build this industry and professionalise it. We want to stop the production of funny books that do not really comply with the standard of good professional publishing,” Ncube revealed. He disclosed that their grounds for professionalising the industry is that some of the books published in Botswana do not conform to the international standards of publishing. He expressed that they do not conform to international standards because they do not follow the right processes to get published. Furthermore, he added that by doing this, it would be able to combat unemployment in the country and also market the books so that filmmakers could also use them to visualise them, which would be a win for authors.
