FunDza: an experiment in mobile books

No one will argue that the basic literacy situation in South Africa is dire. With access to books being so low (only 7% of South Africa’s schools have afunctioning library), several people have proposed utilising the mobile phone — one device that is certainly not rare in South Africa — as a platform for accessing books.

This is an idea that’s been thrown around in South Africa since around 2007, and multiple projects have been started in the past few years experimenting in getting people, particularly kids, to read books on basic mobile phones. We caught up with one such organisation to see how they are faring.