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{
    "id": 1483124,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1483124/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 288,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Dagoretti South, UDA",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. John Kiarie",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "The situation was already so dire before we even devolved libraries to a point where a joke was being made that if you want to hide anything from a Kenyan or an African, hide it in a book. It was known that Kenyans and Africans do not read. This is the time we would be disabusing that notion. However, counties have not stepped up to the plate to protect the repositories of knowledge known as libraries. Neither have counties worked hard enough to bring the libraries in this country up to speed with technology and the times. This Bill spells out the purpose of this piece of legislation if it becomes law. It says that the purpose of this Bill is to preserve national documentary heritage and distinguish functions of the Kenya National Library Service from other public libraries. Preservation of national documentary heritage is critical for this country, especially at a time like this. I used to be part of a troupe called the Kenyatta University Traveling Theatre, when you and I were at the university. It ended up giving birth to a show known as Redykyulass, which ended up being one of the most-watched shows in Kenya's history. It was billed as the most-watched show in Eastern and Central Africa at that time. I learned then that there were people who were seeking to preserve the content with every production that we made. One such people is the Library of Congress in the United States of America. They were keen to have every single episode of Redykyulass documented and deposited at the Library of Congress for records. You can imagine if I wanted Redykyulass today, I might not get it in any Kenyan library. It tells you what tragedy we got into with those libraries. Even more importantly, we are in what is being called the 4IR—the Fourth Industrial Revolution that shall be driven by data. As we speak today, the situation of data presentation is in such a way that we might be walking back to the era that we were in. Those are the times of colonisation and slave trade where the extractive economy was the order of the day. Knowledge was being extracted from this continent and being imported to other places. If you look at London, New York and the big cities in the East, they have been built on the back, blood, sweat and tears of the Africans. Even more tragically, that story is not recorded anywhere. If you go to a school today and ask a child where the source of knowledge is, they will tell you that intelligence comes from the West, not knowing that Africa, at some point, was the superpower of knowledge. It was just the other day that we were here on this Floor having a conversation with Hon. CNN and talking about the great libraries of Africa that were in Mali, Cairo, Abyssinia or the Kush Kingdoms that were in the area that we live in today. The great libraries of South Africa. Generations that will come after us might never know that the idea of the library was The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}