With the support of the Presidency, the Government of Rivers State and UNESCO Nigeria, Rainbow Book Club bidded for Port Harcourt to be UNESCO World Book Capital 2014. We beat 10 cities, including Oxford, to clinch the coveted title. The nomination is ‘an exclusive symbolic acknowledgment of the best programme dedicated to books and reading’. In the year of our tenure we successfully delivered 23 exciting programmes with a far reach to players in the book chain industry and the general public. Other World Book Capitals have included Alexandria (Egypt) in 2002, Antwerp (Belgium) in 2004, Montreal (Canada) in 2005 and Incheon (South Korea) in 2015.
An important outcome from the PHWBC programme is the now worldwide Bring Back Our Girls Campaign which was brought to public attention by Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka in his keynote address at the opening ceremony on April 23rd 2014 and which campaign was triggered off by Dr Obi Ezekwesili on the same platform. Thanks to social media, the campaign went viral, pulling in participation of world figures like Malala Yousafzai, David Cameron, and Michelle Obama

