Rabat – On average, Moroccans read 27 books a year, spending 57 hours consuming knowledge from a variety of subject areas, according to a new study conducted in the United Arab Emirates.
Morocco’s results tie it for second place in the 2016 Arab Reading Index, which included all 22 members of the Arab League in its region-wide survey, published on Tuesday.
The researchers from the Mohammed Bin Rashed Al Maktoum Foundation circulated an electronic questionnaire online, with support from Arab celebrities, who shared the survey to their web followings on Facebook and Twitter.
Of the 148,294 residents of the Arab World who responded, 60,680 were students completing various stages of their education, 87,614 others came from different professional and social backgrounds.
Egyptians logged 63.85 hours of reading time annually – highest number of hours of all Arab countries included in the United Nations Development Programme sponsored study. The country’s residents completed 27 books a year – just like Moroccans.
Lebanese respondents said they read for 59 hours a year, completing 29 books in the process – the highest number of all countries surveyed.
Somali respondents reported the weakest reading habits, with citizens diving into a book for just 7.78 hours every year.
Moroccan readers also said they diversified their reading, allocating equal amounts of time to texts related to their profession and books chosen out of sheer interest. Of all Arab nations, Morocco demonstrated the lowest difference in time spent reading books inside and outside their field of work – with most of the brain-building activity occurring in Arabic.
