Dr. Isaac Munyakazi.
Kigali: In Rwanda, the book chain has undergone tremendous changes in the last few years, growing from 3 to more than 30 local publishers and publishing from 15 to more than 1000 Kinyarwanda children’s books for children ages 0-10 years.
There is a nascent book industry organized in collectives, building more partnerships, and seeking to enter the digital era. However, enhancing the technical capacity in several key areas to sustain growth in the sector and ensure availability of a sufficient range of reading materials is imperative in order to tackle major challenges hindering healthy progress of the book chain in Rwanda.
Quality pre-primary Kinyarwanda books to support the development of emergent literacy and pre-reading skills are scarce as are books that expose the youngest children to topics in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). There are few, if any books that adequately address issues of gender and inclusion (for instance lead characters with disabilities or characters portrayed exhibiting non-gender-specific behavior and roles), and books with lead female characters in locally produced Kinyarwanda children’s books represented only 30 percent by 2018. Rwanda also faces challenges in using digital solutions to avail books and learning materials. This represents huge missed opportunity in accessing books in innovative, cost-free ways and to increase digital literacy in general.
These are some of the challenges the World Bank in partnership with Save the Children International is seeking to address through the Reading Ready project. The $1 million project funded by the Results in Education for All Children (REACH) Trust Fund aims to address the challenges of low production and use of locally made pre-primary books highlighting gender, inclusion, and STEM by incentivizing the production of at least 50 new Kinyarwanda pre-primary level supplementary book titles highlighting these themes.
“It is very important to focus on pre-primary education as a foundation for human capital development in the country” Said Dr. Isaac Munyakazi, the Minister of State in charge of Primary and Secondary Education during the launch of the project. He reiterated the government’s commitment to not only “support the young children to become strong readers but also strong writers in the future”.
Reading Ready Project will also address the local limitations on the use of technology to teach reading to the youngest children by digitizing these newly created Kinyarwanda books and making them available on the Global Digital Library. By doing so, children and their families, teachers and librarians will be able to access a wealth of pre-primary digital books on-line as well as off-line (for those without internet). “High quality books should be made widely accessible both inside and outside of school walls and parents and their children should be encouraged to get and read them”. Said Dr. Irenee Ndayambaje, Director General of Rwanda Education Board.
The proposed program will use a results-based financing (RBF) approach to build the capacity of the authors, illustrators, publishers and designers to create and digitize the new books and translate already existing ones. It will also strengthen REB’s capacity to streamline approval processes for supplementary reading materials; and work with pre-primary teachers, librarians, and children to effectively use the new books in both print and digital versions.(End)