Digital Digital Publishing is Dawning in Africa, but Please Don’t Forget the Printed Book Quite Yet

Scott Walter and Charles Temple, 2019

Digital Publishing is Dawning in Africa, but Please Don’t Forget the Printed Book Quite Yet

Too many children in developing countries don’t read well, and because people learn to read by reading, addressing the dearth of reading materials is a priority of development agencies. Digital technology offers the hope of filling the gap. But as we will argue, the cost of hardware is still a bottleneck; and more seriously, since readers need materials of high quality that are relevant to their lives, there is a need to sustain viable publishers in developing counties who can produce those materials. But the flood of digitized materials from abroad and the push for open licensing runs the risk of undermining local publishers. A sustainable way to improve literacy in developing countries should include support to those publishers.

A Practical Guide for Designing Track and Trace Systems for Teaching and Learning Materials

World Bank, 2022

A Practical Guide for Designing Track and Trace Systems for Teaching and Learning Materials

This guide (also available in French and Spanish) was created to help key country stakeholders understand and make the various decisions they must make in designing a Track and Trace (TnT) system, from initial conception through the “nitty-gritty” details of implementation. We begin with some of the biggest questions that need to be answered first when designing a new TnT system, such as “why are we designing a TnT system?” and “what do we want our system to be able to do?” This will help narrow the focus as we shift into more detailed discussions of technology options, deciding who will use the system and how they will interact with it, identifying key data pieces and their source, considering options for training users of the system, and identifying key performance indicators. Annexes at the end of these guidelines will discuss master datasheets, indicator reference sheets, additional technology considerations, and a longer form case study.

Publishing in Africa: Where are we now? An update for 2019

Hans Zell, 2019

Publishing in Africa: Where are we now? An update for 2019.

This research seeks to provide a broad round-up of the current situation of the book industry in Africa today (primarily that in English-speaking sub-Saharan Africa), together with a brief review of the work and activities of the various organizations and associations that have been supportive of African publishing over the years.

The Scramble for Textbooks in Tanzania

Sonia Languille, 2015

The Scramble for Textbooks in Tanzania

In 2014, the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) government in Tanzania decided to discontinue the market-based system for textbook provision that was established in the early 1990s and revert to full state control Drawing on the theory of political settlements and the literature on Tanzania’s industrial politics, the article examines the political economy of textbook provision in this country in order to generate new insights into the relations between the educational, political, and economic spheres. It shows how donor ideology and practices, while subjecting textbooks to generic market principles, also promoted the interests of Western publishing corporations. It then argues that the distribution of power within the state, and the ambiguous relations between the CCM ruling elites, bureaucrats, and the capitalist class, prevented the consolidation of a textbook industrial policy geared towards supporting the local publishing industry. Finally, the article explores elites’ diverse corrupt practices to capture public funding for textbooks at the national and local levels. Under Tanzania’s country-specific political settlement, the textbook sector, far from primarily serving educational goals, has indeed been reduced to a vast site of primitive accumulation.

Interventions in Book Provision: Suffocating Education and the Local Book Industry the Case of Tanzania.

Abdullah Saiwaad, 2017

Interventions in Book Provision: Suffocating Education and the Local Book Industry the Case of Tanzania.

”In Tanzania it is evident that the book sector has not been developing at a pace commensurate with the growth of the population and the other economic sector in the country. Indeed there are indications that the sector as a whole has been in steady decline since the early seventies, began picking up in the years from 1993 to 2013 and is now quickly declining into the pre 1993 era. The reasons for this are many and cut across socio-political and economic factors. The collapse of the economy since the late 1970s is one such factor. The lack of a developed publishing, printing and book distribution infrastructure at the time of independence is another. The low level of educational and linguistic attainment among Tanzanians is yet another contributory factor.”

The Education We Want

HakiElimu, 2021

The Education We Want: A Critical Analysis of the Education and Training Policy (ETP) 2014, Issues, and Recommendations

The report offers insights into the kind of education required to prepare citizens to cope with the demands of the 21st Century and the complexity of the world. It identifies policy issues in 21 key domains covering a full spectrum of education provision. It makes several recommendations for an approach of education we want, based on the local reality of education in Tanzania, international experiences, and best practice from the high-performing education system of similar and different economic, political and educational contexts.

Association between availability of children’s book and the literacy-numeracy skills of children aged 36 to 59 months

Alexander Manu, Fernanda Ewerling, Aluisio JD Barros, Cesar G Victora, 2019

Association between availability of children’s book and the literacy-numeracy skills of children aged 36 to 59 months: secondary analysis of the UNICEF Multiple-Indicator Cluster Surveys covering 35 countries

Stimulating home environments that have children’s books, pictures and play toys facilitate caregiver-child interactions and enhance children’s development. Although this has been demonstrated in small-scale intervention studies, it is important to document whether book ownership is beneficial at large scale in low and middle-income settings.

Only half (51.8%) of children from all the countries analysed have at least one children’s book at home and less than one-third (29.9%; 95% confidence interval (CI) = 23.5%, 36.3%) are on track for literacy-numeracy. After adjusting for confounders, the likelihood of being on track in literacy-numeracy almost doubled if at least one book was available at home compared to when there was none: RR = 1.89 (95% CI = 1.75, 2.03). There was an economic gradient showing that the likelihood of children being on track for LNI decreased with the country’s income group: adjusted-RR ranged from 1.65 in upper middle income to 2.23 in LIC (F-test P-value <0.0001). Only three high-income countries were included, and children’s books were universally available resulting in wide confidence intervals for the effect.

These findings are policy-relevant, as they corroborate the results from small scale experiments. Making children’s book available to children is a cheap and feasible intervention that could change home dynamics to improve the future economic fortunes of children especially in the poorest countries.

Mozambique - Can Results-Based Financing Ensure that Books Reach Students in Time for the Start of the School Year?

World Bank, 2021

Mozambique - Can Results-Based Financing Ensure that Books Reach Students in Time for the Start of the School Year

Textbooks are one of the most important tools to foster learning. There is evidence from a wide range of countries that, in order to raise literacy rates and improve learning outcomes, students must have access to learning materials and use them. Results-based financing (RBF) can be an important tool to help governments to overcome the obstacles and to ensure that all students have access to quality books in an appropriate language. RBF can be used to provide incentives to stakeholders at all stages of the supply chain - from book development and production to procurement and distribution - to ensure the receipt of books by schools and to incentivize the use of books in schools and at home. The provision of RBF prizes proved highly effective at driving the construction and repair of book storage facilities in zone of pedagogical influence (ZIP) schools. More than three-quarters of the surveyed ZIP schools eligible for the competition constructed or repaired their storage facilities.

Embedding Track and Trace in Book Supply Chains, El Salvador

World Bank, 2022

Read@Home - Embedding Track and Trace in Book Supply Chains : Final Country Report - El Salvador

The Read@Home Track and Trace to Strengthen Book Supply Chains project involved the creation of a best practices guide to implementing track and trace solutions for Teaching and Learning Materials (TLM). Support was also provided to five target countries to adapt these best practices to the country context to enable the development of robust, locally-owned supply chain monitoring systems to ensure delivery of TLM to the schools and families that need them most.

Embedding Track and Trace in Book Supply Chains Track and Trace : Design Document - Niger

World Bank, 2022

Read@Home - Embedding Track and Trace in Book Supply Chains Track and Trace : Design Document - Niger

This system design document was compiled following workshops with key national stakeholders followed by subsequent key informant interviews and data collection. Expansive data collection and follow-on design and validation workshops were organized for those countries where it was possible. This design sets out the expected functionality of the technology to be used to improve the monitoring of the textbook distribution chain.