The Shuttleworth Foundation has unveiled Yoza, a library of mobile phone novels or m-novels, as part of its mobiles for literacy (m4Lit) project.
“For the foreseeable future the cellphone, and not the Kindle or iPad, is the e-reader for Africa. Yoza aims to capitalise on that to get Africa's teens reading and writing,” says Steve Vosloo, 21st Century Learning fellow at the Shuttleworth Foundation, who heads up the m4Lit project.
Last year, the Shuttleworth Foundation rolled out Africa's first isiXhosa and English free m-novel as a pilot initiative called Kontax. By the end of May this year, another Kontax story had been published and since the m-novels' release, both stories have been read over 34 000 times on cellphones.
Over 4 000 entries were received in the writing competitions, and over 4 000 comments have been left by readers on individual chapters. Encouraged by the demand, Vosloo says the Shuttleworth Foundation decided to roll out Yoza.
The Shuttleworth Foundation's m4Lit project aims to use content on mobile phones to encourage reading among the youth and develop literacy skills.
According to Vosloo, only 7% of public schools in SA have functional libraries.
Vosloo explains that the majority of digital reading is done on cellphones due to the fact that more South Africans have access to a cellphone than a PC or laptop. He says 90% of urban youth have their own cellphone.
M4Lit has conducted several workshops in areas such as Gugulethu and Khayelitsha to find out what content the youth want to read and on what platform they want to read it on.
Vosloo says Yoza is ultimately a literary project that aims to encourage a community of active readers in the 14 to 18 age group. He says there's a huge potential to integrate social media into the project to encourage reading.
“We've had 4 700 unique visits to the sites since Sunday when we went live,” says Vosloo. “We initially went for 14 to 18-year-olds; however, there's scope to publish stories that reach different audiences.”
While the project is currently funded by the Shuttleworth Foundation, the funding will only be available until end February next year. Vosloo says m4Lit will look for sponsors in the near future to make the project sustainable.
The Yoza library has six free m-novels for readers to choose from and sequels to the stories will be released on the first of each month from October.
Yoza is available on www.yoza.mobi and on Mxit on all WAP-enabled cellphones, as well as on Facebook under Yoza cellphone stories.
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