08/09/2026
MEDIA STATEMENT
For immediate release — Lusaka, 8 September 2026
INTERNATIONAL LITERACY DAY 2026: A NATION THAT READS IS A NATION THAT RISES
Issued by Dr. Sydney Muponda , PhD — Chief Visionary Officer and Publisher, SOTRANE Publishers Limited
SOTRANE Publishers joins the world in commemorating International Literacy Day, observed this year under the UNESCO theme "Literacy for people, the planet and prosperity" — and marking the 60th anniversary of the day's proclamation.
The theme names three things we hold as one. Literacy serves people, because a person who can read and write can question, participate and choose. It serves the planet, because the environmental decisions ahead of us will be argued in print before they are made in practice. And it serves prosperity, because no economy has ever grown faster than the ability of its people to understand it.
At the centre of all three sits the book, and inside the book sits the story. Long before Zambians wrote, we told. Storytelling is how this nation has always carried its law, its memory and its moral instruction from one generation to the next. Publishing does not replace that tradition — it gives it permanence, reach and a market. When we put a Zambian story between covers, we are not merely producing a commodity. We are banking national memory and issuing it back to our children as inheritance.
This is the mission SOTRANE has pursued since 2018: to publish African stories to international standard, to grow indigenous authorship, and to make reading ordinary rather than exceptional.
But the numbers demand more than commemoration. UNESCO estimates that at least 739 million youth and adults still lacked basic literacy skills as of 2024, and four in ten children are not reaching minimum reading proficiency. A ceremony will not close that gap.
We therefore call for concerted national effort.
To Government: fund school and community libraries, procure locally published books, and treat local-language publishing as development expenditure rather than cultural decoration.
To corporate Zambia: direct social investment toward books and reading spaces. A branded borehole serves a village; a stocked library serves its grandchildren.
To the public: buy a book, read to a child, join a reading circle. Literacy is built one household at a time.
Literacy is not a soft issue. It is the cornerstone on which development and prosperity are laid.
ENDS
-
Media contact:
Sotrane Publishers · Room 601, 6th Floor, Kulima Tower Building, Katunjila Road, Lusaka
+260 76 346 5255 · +260 97 501 6180 · [email protected] · www.sotranepublishers.com
