Cambridge Digital Publishing Manager · Worldreader · 2014
African-language readers on phones people already had.
Cambridge South Africa’s first technology-NGO partnership: 390 e-books, including the Cambridge African Language Library, made freely available through Worldreader’s feature-phone reading app.12
My role: I initiated the partnership as Digital Publishing Manager at Cambridge University Press South Africa and led the project. Worldreader built the app. Cambridge licensed the books. The titles were free to readers.
The brief
Literacy content was stuck in print while feature phones were everywhere.
In 2014, most children in the partnership’s target countries had access to basic phones, not tablets or iOS and Android devices. Worldreader had built an e-reading app on BiNu that turned those feature phones into readers.2
Cambridge had a primary reading series, the Cambridge African Language Library, produced from the late 1990s in indigenous languages across Zambia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Malawi, Uganda, Tanzania and Eswatini (then Swaziland). Much of it was going out of print. The languages were the scarce asset.12
Design problem
How could a traditional education publisher put out-of-print African-language readers onto the phones children already used, without waiting for a smartphone market that had not arrived?
The device
Meet the reader where the phone already is
The Bookseller quoted me calling the Worldreader development genius: anyone with a phone now had an e-reader if they downloaded the app.
My contribution
Start CUP SA’s first technology-NGO partnership
This was not a new list of titles. It was a rights, conversion and distribution decision: put existing African-language readers onto a channel built for low-end phones.
Initiate the partnership
Brought Cambridge South Africa into its first project with a technology NGO. Organisations of that kind were becoming more active in literacy work on the continent.2
Licence the CALL list
Made 390 e-books available, including CALL titles whose value was the language mix, not novelty of plot. Worldreader wanted material for young children and did not have much of it.2
Keep it free
The project did not make money for Cambridge. Worldreader funded text conversion. Readers got the books free, in digital form, for three years.2
Say it in public
Interviewed for The Bookseller on the partnership, as digital publisher at CUP SA, so the model was visible to other publishers, not only to the two organisations.
The list
Cambridge African Language Library
A primary reading series in indigenous languages. The covers below are from the titles made available through the partnership.
What the numbers do and do not say
Worldreader’s 2013 reach is not Cambridge’s delivery figure.
In 2013 Worldreader reported 330,000 monthly active users reading 650,000 books on mobile phones. That is the NGO’s platform, before and beyond this licence. Cambridge’s contribution was 390 e-books, including CALL, on that channel, free to users.12
Worldreader’s public site today is a different product, BookSmart, for family reading on current devices. The 2014 work was the feature-phone BiNu app.
What I took from the work
Three publishing lessons
- The scarce asset was language, not a new app. CALL was valuable because few publishers had early-grade books in those languages.
- Distribution has to match the device people actually own. In 2014 that was a feature phone, not a tablet programme.
- A first NGO partnership is a publishing decision. Rights, conversion cost and a three-year free window mattered more than a new imprint.
Attribution: This was a partnership between Cambridge University Press South Africa and Worldreader. This case study covers my role initiating and leading Cambridge’s side. It does not treat Worldreader’s later products or current user figures as outcomes of the 2014 licence. Phone photograph and CALL covers are from my 2014 public posts.
Sources and further reading
- Pioneering mobile learning in Africa: a partnership with Worldreader (June 2014)
- CUP South Africa partners with NGO Worldreader, including The Bookseller interview (August 2014)
- Worldreader (organisation site; current product is BookSmart, not the 2014 BiNu app)
Explore more work
See later local-language publishing and current AI programmes.