The African Storybook Project aims to provide accessible stories in local African languages to improve literacy among children. It seeks to address the disparity in literacy achievement in Africa by creating a digital library and tools for digital storytelling, while focusing on the majority of children who are often marginalized. The project plans to develop a sustainable model for story creation and sharing, leveraging open licensing and community contributions to enhance literacy development across the continent.

1. The First 18 Months of the African
Storybook Project
Tessa Welch
26 June 2014
ASP Summit, University of British Columbia

2. Our vision is for all African children to have enough
stories in a language familiar to them - not only to
practise their reading skills, but also to learn to love
reading.
We aim to address the shortage of stories for early
reading in local African languages by providing not
only a digital library, but also tools for digital
storytelling – both versioning (translation and/or
adaptation) and creating.
The African Storybook Project
An initiative of Saide funded by Comic Relief

3. Involvement of UBC in this project
• Dr Bonny Norton – research advisor – heading up the
African Storybook Project Research Network (ASREN)
• Dr Juliet Tembe (UBC graduate), in country-
coordinator, Uganda;
• Dr Sam Andema (UBC graduate student), policy
advisor to the ASP Steering Committee
• Doris Abiria (UBC graduate), pilot site coordinator;
• Espen Stranger-Johannessen (UBC graduate student),
consultant researcher.

4. Why the African Storybook Project?
The project is intended as a contribution to addressing
the stark inequality of literacy achievement illustrated
in the following graphs based on analysis of results of
South African learners in various systemic tests.
The pattern of inequality emerges as early as the third
year of schooling, and continues right through to the
twelfth grade.

5. The ‘bimodal distribution of achievement’: an
issue of class
Nicolas Spaull . (2012). Poverty and Privilege: Primary School Inequality in South Africa.
(Stellenbosch Economic Working Paper 13/12

6. The ‘bimodal distribution of achievement’: how
it plays out in terms of language in SA

7. ASP has to address the marginalised majority
• To contribute to literacy development in Africa, the
agenda of the project cannot be driven by the
minority – the top 20 – 25% (or the African language
diaspora).
• ASP has to be concerned about the majority – the
75-80% who are marginalised in terms of mastery of
the language of wider communication and the use of
technology.

8. We have to remember the 80% as we work
with/in local African languages.
• African languages as a basis for sound literacy
development – leading to better foundation for
acquisition of the language of wider communication.
Not African languages primarily for cultural preservation or
social cohesion (though these are benefits as well).
• Wariness about ‘standard’ versions of African
languages – often the standardised dialect is as alien
to children as a language that is not local.

9. • Technology is easily assimilated by the top 20% .
• We also need to avoid ‘greenhouse’ technology
experiments for small samples of the 80%.
• The challenge is systemic implementation for the
majority.
We have to remember the 80% as we work
with digital tools and methods of delivery

10. • It is the 20% who buy books, but we need to
encourage reading for the 80% who can’t buy books
– not just at school, or associated with temporary
projects where funds have limits.
• If we use open licensing, and place versioning and
storytelling in the hands of the 80%, we may be able
to facilitate access to the quantity of material in the
variety of languages needed to include them in the
reading market.
We have to remember the 80% as we decide on
publishing models

11. • Literacy development doesn’t come ‘naturally’ as a
result of changes in policy, curriculum or even the
provision of resources where there were none
before.
• It requires learning how to use the new resources
and the local language to stimulate literacy
development.
And this is one of the important reasons that we need
PARTNERS.
We have to remember the 80% as we work
with partners

12. A digital platform for access and use of stories
for early reading
• Target audience of platform: people who work with
children, not children themselves.
• Built in Drupal, and open source code we have
developed to be made available by the end of 2014.
• Developmental design of website in consultation
with the pilot sites and other users.

13. Main feedback on preview site/s over 6 months
• Too slow for low bandwidth situations (esp Uganda)
• Doesn’t allow users to upload own illustrations
Response for next release (October):
• Mobi site for reading
– with ability to download in epub (not only PDF)
– and bigger range of print options
• Stripped down story creation tool – users will send
us illustrations to upload.

14. Stories to access and use
Overall goal – a sustainable way to provide stories
good enough to be used for literacy development
Purpose with 120 ‘start-up’ stories:
• Critical mass for children to use in pilot sites
• Test sources of stories, and amount of work involved
in digital publishing
• Work out what it takes to supply sufficient
‘exemplars’ of stories – picture stories, stories that
children can read on their own – for the 80% (largely
unfamiliar with such stories)

15. Sources of first 120 stories
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10
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70

16. Sources of stories – going forward
• Maintain contribution from partners
• Increase donation from famous authors
• Identify out-of-print appropriate stories in local
languages (mainly) and re-publish – digital
preservation of high quality conventionally published
material.

17. Methods of story acquisition
Donated
Developed
centrally
Workshop
products

18. Methods of story acquisition – going forward
• Reduce central development.
• Maintain donations.
• More local language stories from story development
workshops (in pilot sites and pilot countries).
• Emphasis on levels 1 and 2 read alone – (eg story
development partnership with Molteno Institute for
Language and Literacy (JHB) – using the Molteno
method to develop supplementary readers in South
Africa, but also Kiswahili and Luyha in Kenya, and
then in Uganda. )

19. Original language of first 120 stories  need to
commission translations
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80

20. African language stories on site mid June 2014
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20
30
40
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21. Concerns re translation
• Quality of most language translations managed
largely by Country Coordinators
– Need for ‘language moderators’ in languages
unknown to coordinators, as well as
– Proof reading and light edits of all translations
But
• Need to beware of alienating ‘standard’ versions
• And support site level language curation (eg
Atteridgeville)

22. Work involved in (re-)publishing digitally
To be expected:
• Engaging authors/illustrators/organisations donating
stories on open licences for the works in which they
hold (and retain) copyright
• Re-formatting donated stories
But we need to find sustainable ways of:
• Getting stories illustrated
• Re-shaping stories

23. Creative Commons
Attribution
(CC-BY)
Creative Commons
Attribution Non-commercial
(CC-BY-NC)

24. Work involved in publishing first 120 stories
Already
illustrated
Commissioned
Text
suitable
Text re-
shaped

25. Strategies for sustainability
• Make ‘re-shaping’ an
educational exercise, not only
a publishing one.
• Image bank for user re-use of
commissioned illustrations (or
part illustrations) in story
creation.
• Experimentation with user
methods of digital
illustration
(see children using Paint).

26. Working with local (oral) stories to convert
them into (picture) stories on a global platform
• The challenge (and time involved) in getting
authentic illustrations.
- See ‘What goes around comes around’ or ‘The Egg’
(Story produced by UgCLA, but not illustrated
• Different notions of ‘suitable’ – censorship?
Managing largely through level and illustration.

27. The girl with one breast
Local illustration of this story
Another local illustrator used
and the story adjusted for a
higher level

28. Delivery of stories
Guiding principles:
1. Consider the resources that the majority of African
children currently get to help them to learn to read,
and aim to exceed this in quantity, quality and
variety through the use of technology – but without
massive investment in infrastructure or devices.
2. Provide and test low cost models of delivery of the
stories, based not on the assumption that the
technology is currently available, but on
affordability for large scale provision.

29. Options for delivery
1. On-demand printing through the use of local
copying and printing centres;
2. Part-time website access where stories are
downloaded and saved on local devices for sharing;
3. The use of low cost hardware devices such as
Raspberry Pi (or similar) for storage;
4. Working in collaboration with partners who may
already be engaged in technology and literacy and
build on these initiatives;

30. Options for delivery
=
+
OR
5. Projectors and notebooks for schools so that stories
can be displayed on a wall for a group of children:

31. Overcoming electricity and internet challenges
• Portable solar chargers
• Storage of stories on
external drives
• Creating hub centres
(where there is better
access)
• Modems from more than
one service provider

32. Encouraging use
• Pilot sites (primary aim – testing conditions on the
ground for refinement of strategy)
• Pilot countries (primary aim – looking at what it will
take to implement systemically in a particular
country)
• Outside our pilot countries (primary aim – long term
sustainability, where organisations and individuals
use and contribute to the website and stories largely
independent of us.)

33. One of our partners, Pratham Books (India)
Purvi Shah and Suzanne Singh
• In 10 years: 270 original titles, in 12 languages – 1700 books
• Recently released stories under CC-BY licence on ScribD
• Now building a platform like ours for the Indian subcontinent

34. Creating and sustaining an African community
for sharing
Intensive work in
pilot sites testing
and refining
processes of story
creation,
translation and
adaptation
Partners from other
countries and
projects use the
website – creating,
translating and
adapting to suit
their needs
Becoming a
community for
sharing and using
local language
stories for early
reading

35. How can you contribute?
• By contributing illustrated stories for the target
audience
• By versioning our stories (particularly in French
and/or Portuguese)
• By giving us feedback that will help us refine our work
• By starting discussions in the comments field for each
story that will help our users with ideas for use
• By assisting us with technical, literacy or pedagogic
advice
• By supporting us with research on project-related
issues

36. Spread the word! Thank you!