In 2015, NBA received a grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to explore the potential for open licensing in enhancing the availability of mother-tongue early-literacy reading resources in the developing world.
As schools in Uganda closed down in late March 2020 due to Covid-19, Mango Tree Literacy Lab (MTLL) had to reconsider its 2020 work plan.
Malawi has over 16 local languages. However, not all these languages are used as school languages in the education system. The illiteracy rate in Malawi is one of the highest in Southern Africa at 58% (UNICEF: 1993). This paper discusses Malawi's school language policy.
The language environment in the Eastern and Southern Region of Africa is rich and dynamic. Many African languages, including Amharic, Kirundi, Swahili, isiZulu, Kinyarwanda, Chichewa, Luganda, Kikuyu, Malagasy, Oromo, and Somali are spoken as mother tongues by millions of African citizens. Some may also serve as regional and national languages.
In 2017, the Department of Basic Education (DBE) said that 27% of public schools nationally are implementing the Incremental Introduction of African Languages (IIAL) in Grades 1 and 2 in 2017 despite challenges, which included an inadequate number of willing and competent teachers as well as negative attitudes and misconceptions about African languages being inferior in the global scheme.
Literacy lies at the heart of UNESCO’s concerns and makes up an essential part of its mandate, being entwined with the right to education set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. These concerns have to do with promoting the meaningful acquisition and application of literacy in laying the basis for positive social transformation, justice, and personal and collective freedom.
Mango Tree Literacy Lab (MTLL) is a Ugandan NGO that believes that African children have the right to read, write and engage with ideas in a language they know and understand. Since 2010, Mango Tree has been supporting early primary literacy in the Lango Sub-region of northern Uganda.
Primer Construction Manual and Teacher Trainer's Guide
These best practice quality recommendations for children’s books are a product of the public-private partnership of the REACH Project. They are intended for use by publishers during book creation, development, and production, as well as by purchasers and librarians for collection development.
If you are planning to translate a storybook from one language to another, then these recommendations are for you. They offer helpful ideas on how to ensure the final story in the new language is high quality. A high-quality translation is one that was not necessarily translated word-for-word, but that retains the meaning and sensibility of the original story in the new language.
Paper presented at the 2017 Africa regional conference of the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) in August 2017 in Kampala, Uganda.
Powerpoint presentation accompanying the paper, Elephant in the Room: The Rise of Open Licensing in Early Literacy in Africa, presented to the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) Africa Regional Conference in Kampala in August, 2017.
Most classrooms in low-income countries lack sufficient instructional resources, despite substantial investment in textbooks and other teaching and learning materials (TLM) over decades. One major cause of this continuing scarcity is that complex, costly, and opaque supply chains cause books to go missing or be delayed. Past attempts at developing distribution management solutions have been overly complex, too project-specific, and/or too expensive, making broad-scale adoption impossible.
Read@Home’s Track and Trace (R@HTnT) app is a revolutionary low-cost platform designed to bring transparency and efficiency to the TLM supply chain. Whether it’s a school textbook, teacher guide, book for
reading practice, or tablet, ensuring TLMs get from the production point and into students’ hands is crucial. The open-source app, funded by the World Bank’s Read@Home initiative, can ensure that every stakeholder
has real-time visibility into the journey of their TLMs and allow them to solve problems and correct issues that arise along the way.
This updated primer discusses challenges and issues faced by content creators, such as publishers, authors, illustrators, and teachers, all of whom have a stake in producing high-quality and cost-effective materials for education. This version includes lessons learned from the COVID-19 lockdowns, technology challenges that still impede access to digital content, and the tradeoffs between digital access and print.
La plupart des salles de classe des pays à faible revenu manquent de ressources pédagogiques, malgré les investissements substantiels dans les manuels scolaires et autres matériels d'enseignement et d'apprentissage sur plusieurs décennies.
This note outlines the World Bank’s Read@Home initiative’s recommendations for a “first collection” of children’s
literature. It is intended for Read@Home and other early reading programs involved in the development and/or
selection of books to support children’s pre-reading and early reading skills.
These First Books templates are square books. The square size mimics the format of most board books for this age group. This resource contains InDesign Master Templates in the proper trim size, with pre-created parent pages for ease of use and a PDF Users’ Guide to aid designers working with the templates.
This template is available only in portrait trim, and at a smaller size than a picturebook. The size is standard for leveled readers in the children’s book industry. This resource contains InDesign Master Templates in the proper trim size, with pre-created parent pages for ease of use and a PDF Users’ Guide to aid designers working with the templates.
This template includes nonfiction features such as a table of contents, captions, sidebars, and bibliographies.This resource contains InDesign Master Templates in the proper trim size, with pre-created parent pages for ease of use and a PDF Users’ Guide to aid designers working with the templates.
This template is fairly large, in order to give space for interesting images and engaging design. This template can be used for fiction or nonfiction. It is available in both portrait and landscape trims. This resource contains InDesign Master Templates in the proper trim size, with pre-created parent pages for ease of use and a PDF Users’ Guide to aid designers working with the templates.
This template includes panel layouts for sequential storytelling. Its user guide also includes more detailed information about developing comic books, as their process is more complex than standard narrative books. This resource contains InDesign Master Templates in the proper trim size, with pre-created parent pages for ease of use and a PDF Users’ Guide to aid designers working with the templates.
We read to learn, to laugh, to challenge ourselves, and to expand our views of the world. As we grow readers at home, we want children to value and love reading. We want them to read to learn, but also to read for pleasure–to choose to read. But what kinds of books help children to learn to read and develop a regular reading habit?
The Reading Comprehension Group developed this interactive guide to promote uptake of literacy activities that strengthen children’s social-emotional learning skills and listening/reading comprehension skills, in the heart of communities through community libraries. The objective of this guide is to help teachers, volunteer teachers and librarians, and community leaders set up libraries where there are none and promote the use of community libraries that already exist via activities that engage the full community.
Book design is crucial for readability, especially for beginning readers. Elements like fonts and how the words on the page are spaced are important for making books clear, useable, and appealing for readers. Good design and file set-up also makes it easier to print books and archive or store them for future print runs.
First, children learn to read. Once they have worked through this important series of milestones, they start reading to learn. Somewhere, in between, they should also be encouraged to read for pleasure.
Soma Book Cafe in Dar es Salaam is a readership promotion space and innovative co-creation hub for literary expression and multimedia storytelling approaches. It provides different arenas for literary expression and discourse; promotes reading for pleasure and encourages independent pursuit of knowledge.
If anything, 2021 has been a more challenging year than 2020 for early literacy in the global South. But as with 2020, this year – with all its pandemic-related setbacks – has also seen a lot of innovation and the sharing of ideas.
The Impact of Open Licensing on the Early Reader Ecosystem examines how to use open licensing to promote quality learning resources for young children that are relevant and interesting.
The African Library and Information Associations and Institutions (AfLIA) and NBA developed a short online course for African librarians and library staff, based on the findings of a survey conducted in 2021. The main course objectives were to:
In April 2021, African Library & Information Associations & Institutions (AfLIA) and NBA agreed to work together to develop a course on early literacy development, specifically for librarians and library staff in Africa. In July 2022, the first batch of certificates was issued to the librarians who completed the course pilot!
The founder and managing director of Sub-Saharan Publishers, Akoss Ofori-Mensah is a force to be reckoned with in the publishing industry.