Bellagio Secretariat report
The Secretariat was involved in organising
three meetings during 1998, two making links between publishing and
other cultural sectors (Pan-African Cultural Policies Consultation in
Lomé in February, the agora seminar `Visions of African Cultural
Co-operation and Development' at UNESCO's Intergovernmental Conference
on Cultural Policies for Development in Stockholm in April), the third
our own annual meeting, held in Copenhagen in December (report on page
2).
The cultural connections led to participation
in the Howard Gilman Foundation's conference on cultural industries
and the World Bank's series of meetings on culture and sustainable development.
Meanwhile we continued our more traditional line of work, attending
the Zimbabwe International Book Fair and other book-related meetings
and events, meeting with publishers and writers, generally talking African
books and publishing whenever we could.
A major exercise during the year has been the
APNET evaluation, commissioned by Sida in consultation with the other
Bellagio donors. We helped facilitate the process, using the draft final
report as the main focus of our annual meeting. Both APNET and the donors
agreed that the Danish consultancy firm, COWI, which carried out the
evaluation made a fine job of it.
As APNET has grown stronger its relationships
with the donors have inevitably changed. From south and north came the
gradual realisation that the Bellagio Publishing Network's role as catalyst
for APNET is reaching the end of its useful life. The Co-ordinator was
invited to Accra in November to discuss the way forward with the APNET
Board. The evaluation recommendations incorporated these discussions,
which were presented to our annual meeting. There we agreed that most
of the functions and funding of this secretariat will be transferred
to APNET over the next three years.
There remain tasks to be done in the north, especially
raising the profile of African publishing. We will continue to do so
by any means we can: face to face; through this newsletter, now distributed
to over 1000 people interested in African publishing worldwide (though
irregularly in 1998, for which we apologise); and through our website
which now has a new, simpler address and to which we will be adding
new material and links in 1999. We welcome comments from those who are
able to visit it on http://www.bc.edu/bellagio. [end] [BPN, no 24, 1998.]
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