Zimbabwean writer, Chenjerai Hove, said African people and writers should be wary as to the functions of this technology and understand the background of who controls it. While noting that there is a need for modern technology, Kenyan writer and scholar, Professor Ali Mazrui, who also attended the ZIBF2000, said the west is now pushing Africa on a digital divide. Before, it was a literary divide. They said Africa had no literature and we Africans had to work hard to prove the point that we had our own literature. The more intricate technology gets, the more it moves away from Africa.
Technology keeps getting further and further from the poor.
But hope for the rejuvenation of Africa's book industry is not all lost. A lot can be done to revive it. The poor can't buy books when the stomach is grumbling. Same for the people themselves. You can take a horse to the river but you cannot force it to drink.