• Some 97 per cent of Internet users in Kenya access the net on their mobile phones
• Nabu.org offers a cheaper way to access children's books, with Covid raising demand
Image: MANUEL ODENY
On a balmy evening on February 4, Beryl Oywer a former colleague at the Star, contacted me via WhatsApp to try a new reading app, Nabu.org.
In the message, Oywer, who is now Kenya’s programme manager for Nabu, said the app is readily available and free.
“Buying books is expensive not only for adults but for parents for their schoolchildren. The cheapest textbook may cost Sh100, the same amount of money that can buy data to access hundreds of books on the app,” Oywer explained in a follow-up interview.
After downloading the app and registering an account, which is an easy step, the first book I downloaded was ‘Anna ana ndoto kubwa’ by Stacey Bett.
I read the book with my six-year-old daughter, a Playing Partner One (PP1) student, as the story and the illustrations are easy to read.
Nabu.org is a free reading app developed in New York, USA, which allows readers to browse, borrow and read hundreds of e-books on their mobile gadgets.
The books are divided into 11 sections, covering English, Swahili, Kinyarwanda, French, Cebuano and Filipino language, including bedtime, learning and school stories.
Downloaded books, which are stored in the app and can be read offline, are stored in the ‘My Books’ segment, with the region’s most trending books in the settings.
Image: MANUEL ODENY
The organisation seeks “to make knowledge accessible to all,” for readers “in their mother tongue and their languages at much lower cost than buying physical books,” the app states.
The organisation was started in 2013 in Haiti and Rwanda, and, through NGOs, in DRC, Cambodia and Mongolia.
“Today, nearly 10,000 readers are accessing 3,806 titles in seven languages sourced from 72 publishers and open source providers,” the organisation said.
By 2013, three years after being started, 45,000 books or 852,010 pages were read online.
Oywer said they seek to provide a high-quality digital library to every student and family across the developing world to help end poverty, and above all, provide a platform for local authors to reach the international market.
“Our plan is to build a digital library with 150 Kiswahili book collection for early grade learners in Kenya and East Africa,” Oywer said.
Already, she said, the organisation has created s system that determines book need for each level of education from pre-primary to Grade 3.
“We will work closely with Kenyan authors and help them gain international recognition as our mobile application is global, apart from adding content from other publishers and open sources,” Oywer said.
Image: MANUEL ODENY
She said the future of reading is digital because online smartphone penetration in Africa is high and the onset of Covid-19 took most teaching and learning online.
“Most parents have phones. This app can be used by parents for only 20 minutes to read to their children,” Oywer said.
Early reading to children is key in building their literacy level and vocabulary by Grade 6.
The World Bank’s pointer is mobile cellular subscriptions, which, as per the latest data in 2019, places the figure at 104 per cent..
Some 80 per cent of adults in Kenya reported owning a mobile phone, with 30 per cent owning a smartphone and 50 per cent owning a basic phone.
The Kenya Digital Report found that 97 per cent of all Internet users in Kenya access the Internet on mobile phones, with Kenyans spending four and a half hours every day using the Internet on their phones.
The mobile Internet penetration rate in Kenya is at 27 per cent of the people, representing one of the highest five-year growth rates in Africa.
Edited by T Jalio