Going Mobile to Get Teens in Africa to Read More

The challenge of getting teenagers to read instead of turning to any number of distractions exists in many places, and can be especially tricky in a continent such as Africa, where access to reading materials is limited. That's why Steve Vosloo is trying to use something that teenagers in Africa do have — cell phones — to improve literacy.

As the Daily Maverick reports, Vosloo started Mobile for Literacy, a program that tries to get teenagers to read more by publishing longer-form content on mobile phones. The need for access to this type of content was made apparent in Vosloo's TEDxSoweto talk, which noted that in South Africa, 51 percent of households have no leisure books and only 7 percent of public schools have a functioning library. That's why Vosloo turned to cell phones. As he was quoted in the article, "Africa is a book-poor but cellphone-rich continent, and this has profound implications for distributing content and also for engaging with people."

Before starting the literacy project, 60 teenagers were interviewed to find out what their habits were like outside the classroom when it came to reading and writing. The findings were that most of these activities were done on cell phones, as was apparently expected. When the project published a mobile novel (entitled Kontax), they realized there was a market there. In a seven-month period, it was read more than 33,000 times, "which is significant because each story is a 20-page word document," according to Vosloo.

Readers were invited to post comments, and they did, with around 4,000 posted. As Vosloo noted, some of the teenage readers asked for stories "with role models that would help them deal with the issues they face such as HIV/Aids [sic], teenage pregnancy and drugs," while others wanted "a much lighter read." No matter the desire, what's important is they want to read more.

Vosloo is also a fellow at the South African-based Shuttleworth Foundation, a group that provides funding for "dynamic leaders who are at the forefront of social change," and in August, the foundation will start a mobile library to house all the teen literature, both from the project and from MXit, a popular free instant messaging software in South Africa. Hopefully the project will continue to grow.

Photo by L_Avi via stock.xchng.