Egypt’s Ministry of Culture organizes over 100 book fairs throughout 2020

CAIRO – 22 December 2020: During the year 2020, the Egyptian Ministry of Culture organized more than 100 book fairs through its sectors, headed by the 51st Cairo International Book Fair at the Egypt International Exhibitions Center, with the participation of 900 Arab, Egyptian and foreign publishing houses from 40 countries around the world who filled 808 pavilions.

The number of visitors exceeded 3.8 million. Senegal was the book fair’s guest of honor and its main personality was late Gamal Hemdan.

Book fairs continued nationwide, as their distribution varied among universities such as Al-Azhar, Alexandria, Al-Wadi Al-Jadid, Assiut, Sohag and Beni Suef, and the cities and centers of the governorates such as Mansoura, Qena and Luxor, and for the first time in a long time, a book fair was organized in the Opera House Square.

The book fairs has also reached -for the first time- 24 villages in Upper Egypt.

The biggest challenges were how the cultural, artistic and intellectual product could reach the citizens at a time when the state applied precautionary measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Here is when the idea of ​​the initiative "Culture is Between Your hands" came to the fore, which aimed to spread the creative, intellectual and artistic treasures owned by the ministry and its various sectors through the ministry’s official YouTube channel, bringing the number of subscribers  to the channel to nearly 109,000 and was able to attract more than 34 million visitors from 28 countries around the world by broadcasting 354 creative content.