Mobile STEM Might Just Boost Innovation in sub-Saharan Africa

At the 2014 Tech Awards in November, Salman Khan gave a speech. In it he posed a provocative question: how many people in the world can do calculus? Or physics? He talked about the history of literacy and noted how hundreds of years ago the possibility of a world in which most of the people were literate would have seemed impossible. The ability to read or write was not just a question of access, but of perceived talent.

Worldreader

Fast forward to the present. We have all come to accept that everyone can read and write if given the chance to learn. When we talk about talent as a necessary perquisite for success, we talk about talent in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). There are “STEM” people and non-STEM people, with the former category being necessarily smaller and more exclusive, reserved for a few. But is that true? Or is it as true as our assumptions about literacy hundreds of years ago? What would happen if the world was filled with an influx of millions of new scientists, engineers and mathematicians?

At Worldreader, the question has taken on special significance as we work to make digital books available to readers in developing countries. We reach our readers with e-readers and free reading applications for mobile phones, one of which we developed in collaboration with Microsoft to work on Windows phones. Our content is varied, crossing all genres and reading levels and is available in over 44 languages. We have over 15,000 e-book titles and are currently increasing it by 10,000 STEM e-books, all of which will be available for free to anyone who downloads the app from the Microsoft app store.

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Worldreader Mobile for Windows phones enables readers to download their books and read them anytime, anywhere.

What could happen?

There is good reason and plenty of precedent to think that an influx of millions of scientists, engineers and mathematicians will have an enormously beneficial impact on developing countries, both by equipping them with the tools to meaningfully address their specific challenges, and by increasing the economic fortunes of their countries.In 2014, Bloomberg released a list of the top 50 most innovative countries in the world. Developed countries dominated, with South Korea coming in at number one. Save for South Africa, no other sub-Saharan African country made the list. With a population that is roughly double that of North America, its lack of presence is conspicuous. A lack of sub-Saharan African innovation means a dearth of new ideas and products that address sub-Saharan African challenges.Screen Shot 2015-02-11 at 8.26.23 AM

South Korea currently boasts the highest income in Asia. Not too long ago, it also used to be a recipient of aid. The reasons behind its meteoric rise to power are numerous, though it has been suggested that its status as a hub for pirated educational content was in no small way part of its success story.

In a world where a reading application with high quality free educational content does not yet exist, pirated content can be seen as serving a similar purpose. Ha-Joon Chang, a Korean economist ranked by Prospect magazine as one of the top thinkers in 2013, and author of Bad Samaritans, wrote that he used pirated books and could never have “entered and survived Cambridge without those pirated books.”

It Starts With Books

The future, the one filled with scientists, engineers and big thinkers begins with education, which is helped along immensely by access to the right information. Our goal, in partnership with critical partners like Microsoft, is to reach 15 million mobile readers in 3 years. Among many other things that will mean 15 million readers who would otherwise lack access to books accessing an immense library of STEM content for free. If even a fraction of such an immense number go on to become STEM professionals it might not be long before we find the next South Korea – in sub-Saharan Africa.

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Dani works on Worldreader’s Mobile and Digital Publishing team, working closely publishers in the Americas and monitoring reading trends across our platforms to ensure our readers have access to the literature they want and need.

 

About Worldreader – Worldreader is a global non-profit organization headquartered in San Francisco, on a mission to deliver digital books to every child and her family so that they can improve their lives. In 2014, Worldreader reached more than 1.2 million readers in 39 countries with the books they need and want to read.