Cellphones at the forefront of the literacy drive

SAVE THE TREES!
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Cellphones are at the forefront of the literacy drive in South Africa, as well as already being the first port of call for many avid readers. So what can you read on your cellphone these days? Fiona Zerbst investigates.

Kenny, 19, is in many respects your average young South African. He is studying full-time, likes music and soccer, and would love to buy a car in the not-too-distant future. He also loves his cellphone.

Like many of his peers, Kenny enjoys reading about what’s happening around him: news headlines, weather, gossip, soccer results. Best of all, he can read it all on his phone, thanks to the growing power of the mobile web.

Mobile content for cellphones is diverse, customisable and user-friendly. Take Kenny’s favourite mobisite, Soccer Laduma (soccerladuma.mobi). Breaking news, live scores, photos, polls, fixtures, TV schedules … everything Kenny wants to know about soccer can be found on his phone. And he enjoys reading the short, punchy articles.

According to Brett St Clair, country manager of AdMob, Soccer Laduma has about 5.4 million page impressions each month. To feed the insatiable hunger of soccer fans, live journalism keeps readers in the picture pretty much 24/7. “The stories and snippets are very popular,” says St Clair. “While most people blame cellphones for the death of reading and spelling, I believe that we need to explore this medium and exploit its benefits,” says Steve Vosloo, project manager of The m4Lit (mobiles for literacy) project, funded by the Shuttleworth Foundation. “South Africa is a book-poor but cellphone-rich society.”

It’s the content that counts
Both St Clair and Vosloo believe that teens and young adults are engaging with content on their cellphones in a way that is quite unprecedented, enabling educators and companies to take their content directly to a hungry audience.

“The most popular site is m.news24.com, which has concentrated on both the mobile web and mobile applications. Currently, mobile web consumption outstrips mobile application use, but this segment shows 30-40 percent growth a month, so applications should not be ignored.”

Another popular site is Independent Online (m.iol.co.za), which has outsourced its content to mobile solutions provider Thumbtribe. IOL, a news site offering the traditional bouquet of news, sport, weather, motoring, business and entertainment – everything you find in your daily newspaper – relies on excellent content.

Meanwhile, the Thumbtribe site itself offers readers a “Best of the Mobile Web” experience, including access to some of South Africa’s favourite magazines, like Heat, FHM, Getaway, Go!, CARmag, Cosmopolitan, Men’s Health, PC Format, Shape, Sports Illustrated and many more. Other much-viewed sites include The Times (m.timeslive.co.za) and the Mail & Guardian (m.mg.co.za).

Even books make it to mobi
Steve Vosloo’s m4Lit mobile literacy project has even brought books to the mobile web – no mean feat! “The project is about using cellphones as a way for teens to read and write,” says Vosloo. “We provide mobile novels (m-novels) to read, as well as inviting writing in the form of reader comments and writing competitions – all on cellphones. If teens don’t read and write enough, but love their phones, then that is what we have to work with. Go fishing where the fishes are!”

Vosloo’s popular, successful m-novels can be found on a mobisite (www.yoza.mobi) and on MXit at MXit Cares > mobiBooks > Yoza.

The first two m-novels in the Kontax series were read over 34 000 times in seven months!

“Our goal is to build a library of cellphone-based stories in multiple genres – called Yoza – that is available to teens not only in South Africa, but ultimately throughout Africa,” says Vosloo. “For the foreseeable future, the cellphone, not the Kindle or iPad, is the e-reader of Africa. We will exploit that to improve Africa’s literacy levels.”

Kontax is a teen adventure story about four graffiti-loving friends in Cape Town. It was first written in English by Sam Wilson and then translated into isiXhosa by Nkululeko Mabandla. Readers asked for soccer stories too, so Charles Human wrote Streetskillz: Golden Goal, about an aspirant young star in Du Noon township, Cape Town.

“Also on offer is Confessions of a Virgin Loser by Edyth Bulbring, about a boy in Jozi who has to navigate around issues of peer pressure, teenage sex and HIV/Aids while just trying to be a cool kid at school. Fiona Snyckers, who has written the Trinity Rising series, penned Sisterz, about two girls in Johannesburg who can’t stand each other - only to find out that they are half-sisters. It’s high drama in the teen chick-lit genre,” says Vosloo.

Most of the stories follow the same format: chapters of around 400 words, told in daily serialised form.

Like teenagers in Japan, who sent the popularity of m-novels soaring, Kenny enjoys m-novels. “They’re easy to read and you really, really want to know what happens next!” he smiles. He may not be able to afford books every day, but Kenny can get all the information and inspiration he needs on his cellphone. Who says cellphones aren’t driving the most powerful revolution in Africa?