Over 2 million people attended 53rd Cairo International Book Fair

on Feb 10, 2022

Islam Baioumy, director of the 43rd Cairo International Book Fair, revealed that more than 2 million people visited the fair. It concluded its two-week activities on Monday and witnessed a great turn-out. Whole families visited the fair and over 600 seminars were held during the period of those two weeks.

The Higher Committee of the Cairo International Book Fair was headed by Egypt’s Minister of Culture Inas Abdel Dayem. He announced that around 2,94,000 visitors attended the grounds on Sunday. This explains the high index of collective awareness of the importance of knowledge in the development and progression of society. Some 1067 Egyptian, Arab and foreign publishers and agencies from 51 countries participated in the event.

Writer Yehia Haqi was the chief personality of the book fair and the writer Abdel Tawab Youssef was the chief personality of the Children’s Book Fair.
In this year’s fair, the latest methods of technology and artificial intelligence were used. It was extremely impressive how writer Yehia Haqi was depicted with the hologram technology in an interactive presentation with the audience. Also, kids at the children’s section watched one of the stories of the late writer Abdel Tawab Youssef through VR glasses.

An award for the Best Arab Publisher was presented for the first time during the fair and the value of the fair’s prizes increased to L.E. 40,000 instead of L.E. 10,000 in each cultural field. Furthermore, the online sale of books was made available on the exhibition’s digital platform and delivery services were given. The Ministry of Culture presented a large number of its publications within the "Your Culture is Your Book" initiative to provide books at affordable prices.