Britain’s Minister for Overseas Development, Mr, Chris Patten, has visited forty countries but considers Tanzania to be one of the ‘nicest and happiest’. He said this at a ceremony at the Ranfurly Library Service in London on December 7th 1988 to mark the 200,000th book to be sent under the ‘Textbooks for Africa Project’. This project is supported also by Rotary International, the British Council and ODA. To mark the occasion Mr, Patten handed over a copy of ‘Abbotts Physics’ to Mr, Ulli Mwambulukutu, the Minister Counsellor for Tanzania in the High Commission in London. The ceremony was held in a spacious 8,000 square-foot warehouse stacked with tea chests containing thousands more books destined for Tanzania, Malawi, Gambia, Botswana and other countries.

Mr, David Membrey, Assistant Director of the Ranfurly Library Service, explained to the Bulletin that Tanzania had been receiving books from Ranfurly ever since 1960. Some 725,000 had been sent altogether, including almost half a million within the last three years. He said that the Ranfurly Library Service was now supplying some three quarters of the books obtained by the Tanzania Library Service and large numbers were also going to schools and other institutions throughout the country.