An agreement for the printing and supply of textbooks for the 2026-2027 academic year was signed yesterday at the Prime Minister’s office, under the supervision of the newly installed Minister of Education Mohamed Al-Grew.
The matter of the timely printing and delivery of Libya’s school textbooks, it will be recalled, has been a perennial problem perceived to be the subject of corrupt local practices for years, if not decades.
The agreement was signed between the Educational Curricula and Research Centre and the Italian company Autorito, as part of early preparations to ensure the availability of textbooks before the start of the new academic year, the Tripoli government said.
The agreement stipulates the printing and supply of 37,093,455 textbooks, distributed across 251 titles for various educational levels, in addition to 200,495,905 school workbooks, thus guaranteeing coverage of the needs of educational institutions throughout the country.
During the signing ceremony, the Minister emphasized the importance of implementing the project according to the highest quality standards and within the specified timeframe, ensuring that textbooks reach students at the beginning of the academic year, thereby supporting the stability of the educational process and providing its essential requirements.
The problematic issue of printing and delivering Libya’s school textbooks
It will be recalled that the matter of the punctual printing and delivering of Libya’s school textbooks has been a problem for years.
At the end of this October 2025, during a television interview on Libya’s state Libya Al-Wataniya TV Channel, Acting Minister of Education, Ali Al-Abed (whose main job is Minister of Labour and Rehabilitation), revealed that there was huge corruption surrounding the printing/delivery of this academic year’s school textbooks.
Al-Abed took up his post as Acting Education Minister after his predecessor was sacked and finally sentenced to three and a half months imprisonment in March last year. He said the delay in the delivery of schoolbooks across the country has been because of a delay in their distribution and not a delay in their printing. The delay was caused by corrupt practices, he added.
Appeal Court sentences former Education Minister in March 2025 to three years and six months
It will be recalled that in March last year, despite the Appeal Court sentencing the Tripoli based Minister of Education Musa Almagarief to three years and six months in jail for corrupt contracting procedures for the printing and supply of school textbooks, he was allowed to roam free in his hometown. Tripoli PM Aldabaiba had chosen not to lift his Ministerial immunity.
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