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.