Egypt Ranks 2nd Place in MENA Region on Arab Reading Index

We all thought Egyptians were just really good at binge watching TV drama in every language, with the new generation binging on the modern-day alternative - Netflix. But according to the Arab Reading Index (ARI), Egyptians are speeding through 89 books per year, allowing us to gobble second place on the list across the Middle East and North Africa region. Coming in 1^st was Lebanon. We’re conceiving knowledge much faster than our ancestors. All this knowledge and we still fail to do basic things like indicate before switching car lanes – lanes that we can’t even create. Never mind!

Arabs are reading both in paper material and digitally with a significant 23 percent attributed to social media, 23 percent to news websites, 21 percent to e-books, 15 percent to e-magazines, 9.3 percent to blogs, and 7.78 percent to professional networks, according to ARI. More than half of the respondents who contributed to these figures stated they prefer digital reading as opposed to traditional paper reading. Perhaps we need a Netflix for books… Or a library.

Previously, obsolete statistics conveyed that “Arabs only read six minutes on average every year and that, statistically, it takes 80 Arabs to read one book every year,” says Jamal bin Huwaireb, the director of MBRF. Hence there was a dire need to update and collate data, a significant indication of our own progress as a nation.

Who needs bookends when we can stash our bookshelf with enough books to hold grip; hurray for Egypt!