E-Book On 2-Week Trial In Ghana

By Samuel Boadi

AMAZONKINDLE, an electronic book capable of holding as many as 1,500 books was on Friday introduced to Class 6 students of OrphanAid Africa Community Centre School at Ahienyah, near Dodowa in the Greater Accra Region.
Worldreader.org, the non-governmental organisation from the United States of America, whose brainchild is the programme, told DAILY GUIDE that it chose the village for the trial in order to acquaint itself with problems that might arise from the use of the books particularly among pupils in order to effect an appropriate updating.
“Ghana is the first country in the world to benefit from such a technology. It uses very little electricity. The battery could last for 2 weeks after charging it for an hour,” project co-founders - Mike Sundermeyer and David Risher have said.
After some short tutorials by the project co-founders, the children were seen easily operating the device with little supervision, accessing and reading several downloaded books. The kindle also has a dictionary and audio reader in addition to a selection of optional text sizes.
Worldreader.org is a foundation which aims at providing library books to children in the remotest parts of the globe.
“Education and literacy are key drivers to economic stability and growth. We need to embrace and develop these tools to ginger wider reading at little or no cost”. Mr Sundermeyer said the NGO will contact telecommunications companies in Ghana and for that matter the whole of Africa, to collaborate with Worldreader.org so as for their customers to access e-books via their mobile phones.
Already, the project co-founders have been in consultation with the Ministry of Education as well as the telecommunications networks to see how best the project could be channeled effectively to all schools in the country.
“This is just the beginning. We will in the near future download books on all the professional courses as well as academic materials onto it. With the kindle, a student at whatever level of education could access a horde of books, read extensively and research well.”
“E-readers can dramatically improve people’s access to books, and we’re proud of our ability to work swiftly to bring this new technology to the Ghanaian people”, Mr Risher indicated to this paper.
Selling at $250 in the US and other parts of Europe, the kindle would be highly subsidised and in most cases supplied freely to schools in Africa.
“Imagine carrying a lot of books in one single device. This is the beauty of the kindle. More important is its ability to design and download all syllabi and courses of study in Ghanaian schools at all levels. Again, it doesn’t need any bulky paper, ink and hard covers. This is paper-free and wholly digitalised.”