Local Book Development in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Tanzania – Book Supply Chain from Ideas to the Minds of Children

• In Event: Books in a digital society? Improving the book supply chain for learners to read from classroom to libraries to home.

Proposal

The presentation will be based on three countries that CODE – a leading literacy organization based in Canada – has conducted in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Tanzania that are integrating the local development, publishing, and distribution of leveled supplementary reading books. The presentation will shed light on how technology – especially digitally available content – has impacted how these books are distributed and used in print format, in anthologies, in digital audio format (with classroom MP3 players and over broadcast radio). The presentation will explore how content is available in digital format (using local “off-grid” hotspots). The books are linked to the various TPD initiatives in each project. Overall, CODE has worked with our local partners to distribute close to 1.4 million books during the period of our current strategic plan (2019 – 2025).

The presentation will then summarize what has been learned toward evaluative learning and what it revealed about key findings to develop, publish, and distribute supplementary reading books in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Tanzania. Some of the findings to be shared are:
• In most contexts, the books provided by our projects are the only supplementary readers or text that are available to rural and remote schools in any numbers. They are being heavily used and support home-based learning. Books combined with audio files (radio and MP3-TA) were very effective whereas ICT solutions were less clearly linked to literacy outcomes.
• Book development, publishing and distribution is most effective when it is linked to a structured teacher professional development activity supported by local Communities of Practice.
• Related to #1 and #2, teachers often struggle to connect supplementary books to an effective structure of scope and sequence that is further linked to their curriculum. As a result, we often find teachers utilizing text that is well below grade level. This may be a result of lower reading levels combined with a lack of teaching strategies for introducing increasingly complexity in text.

In summary, the presentation will conclude with some key takeaways about book supply issue for both researchers and implementers in Africa based on Code’s experience and our recent 3 key evaluative learnings on the provision, use and efficacy of supplementary readers for literacy in book, audio, and digital format.

Author

• Julie Donohue-Kpolugbo, CODE.ngo