Digitizing books in Nigerian languages

The national libraries of Norway and Nigeria are set to formalize an agreement (on 10 June 2017) for digitization of literature written in Nigerian languages. Plans are for the project to begin in Norway and then shift to Nigeria after three years.

The project has interesting implications for digitization of materials in African languages more broadly. For one thing it could serve as a pilot for similar collaborative efforts in other areas of the continent. Those could involve libraries in other Northern countries that have significant holdings in African languages.

Another aspect to consider is that of cross-border languages. Of the three languages that the project will initially focus on - Hausa, Yoruba, and Igbo - the first two are also spoken in other countries of the region. Could this effort to digitize books be designed to anticipate readers from other countries where those languages are spoken, and involve their national libraries?

There are some questions concerning format and access which one anticipates will be answered as details on the project are shared.

More on book donations to Africa

My previous post on "Linguistic imbalance in book donations to Africa" elicited a reply from Hans Zell, who informed me of work he and Raphaël Thierry have done on a two part study under the collective title "Book donation programmes for Africa: Time for a reappraisal? Two perspectives," which is to be published later this year in African Research & Documentation (No. 127, 2015). Pre-publication versions are available on Academia.edu:

• "Part I: Book Donation Programmes in English-speaking Africa," by Hans M. Zell (107 pp.)
• "Part II: Le don de livre, mais à quel prix, et en échange de quoi? Un regard sur le don de livre en Afrique francophone," by Raphaël Thierry (in French, with abstract in English; 77 pp.)

I had not been aware of this work, which addresses a real gap in research on book donations to Africa and their impact. From a quick perusal it certainly seems that both parts go into considerable depth, including on aspects of the languages of books donated to Africa, and with reference to a large number of programs. If you are interested in the subject of book donations to Africa, add these to your reading list.

Addendum (20 July 20)

Here is the full citation for the study in Madagascar mentioned in the previous posting:

• Laurence Hugues and Marie Michèle Razafintsalama, "Quelles « nouvelles » pratiques du don de livres pour répondre au besoin des jeunes lecteurs africains dans les bibliothèques?" / "What 'new' book donation practices can meet the needs of young African readers in libraries?" Paper presented at: IFLA WLIC 2014 - Lyon - Libraries, Citizens, Societies: Confluence for Knowledge in Session 144 - Africa with Libraries for Children and Young Adults. In: IFLA WLIC 2014, 16-22 August 2014, Lyon, France. 

In responding to my blog posting, Laurence Hugues called my attention to a recent publication on e-books to Africa:

• Matthieu Joulin, "Le don de livres numériques : quelles logiques et quels enjeux?" Alliance-Lab / Alliance Internationale des Éditeurs [website], 23 mars 2015

Both of the above mention the issue of the language(s) of publication of the books or e-books donated to Africa, and both were cited and discussed by Hans Zell and Raphaël Thierry in their respective articles.

One interesting subject touched on by all of the above is that of a new "charter" or set of agreed-upon standards and best practices for book donations (not just limited to Africa). A "Charte de Don des Livres" was created in 2005 by several organizations including UNESCO, but never translated (as far as I can find) into English. That document did not specifically mention languages at all, although it does recommend (Article 9) that book donations take into account the cultural identities of recipient communities.

In researching my original posting on the "linguistic imbalance" of book donations to Africa, I came across an article by the executive director of Books for Africa, which argues the case for donating English-language (not African language) materials:

• Patrick Plonski, "Providing Books For Schools and Libraries in Africa: What Is the Impact on Literacy?" Paper presented at the 53rd annual meeting of the African Studies Association, San Francisco, California, November 2010.

There is clearly a range of opinions and experience regarding best practices, so it does seem that the time is ripe for a broader dialogue to reappraise book donations to multilingual Africa, taking into account languages (linguistic "bibliodiversity"), the roles of national publishing and local writers, diverse community interests, evolving digital technologies, and other factors. The outcome could be some agreed upon set of guidelines for future book donations and foreign support for development of reading materials.

Linguistic imbalance in book donations to Africa

“When you give someone a book, you don’t give him just paper, ink, and glue. You give him the possibility of a whole new life.” - Christopher Morley (American author and publisher)

“Sadly there are still those people who believe that any book is better than no book, so irrelevant and unusable materials from the West are shipped over, at no small cost.” - Sara Harrity MBE (former director, Book Aid International)

Giving books and other reading materials to those who do not otherwise have access to them is seen as a good thing, and it generally is, apart donation practices that have been widely criticized as "book dumping." However, there is also an inherent asymmetry in the kind of reading material generally going from the West to Africa, in that most of it is in Europhone languages, with little or none in the first languages of the children and communities who receive them. And this linguistic imbalance, aside from sometimes being a factor in unusability of materials (when people can't read the language in which they are written), certainly carries with it unintended messages about the lower value of first languages and local cultures relative to those of the donated materials.

At least some book donation programs in Africa have taken steps to address this imbalance by including materials in African languages, and among these, projects providing e-books and other digital texts have the easier road.

Book donations to Africa: What's involved?

A 2014 article based on a study in Madagascar ("What 'new' book donation practices can meet the needs of young African readers in libraries?") has a useful description of book donations to Africa:

"Donations can be books collected from libraries, schools, individuals or associations abroad. They can be new books, recuperated book pulps or second-hand books, mainly religious books, textbooks, literature, and some academic and professional books. It [sic] can also be books bought or published by international organisations and freely redistributed as part of their education programme.

"Donations can also be acquisitions of local books through purchases in a bookshop or the allocation of a budget to an associative structure towards acquiring books published locally."

In this mix, clearly the weight of foreign books in Europhone languages (in which most reading and instructional materials are published) is literally and figuratively much greater. For instance, the US non-profit Books for Africa has shipped over 30 million books in hundreds of containers to Africa. But a search of their site yields no mention of books in languages other than in English or French. Another American NGO, African Library Project, also focuses on English language materials but also asks for donations to help purchase "native language" books.

The British non-profit Book Aid International also seems to focus on English language materials to Africa, but also has included some locally produced books in African languages. Another British NGO, Books2Africa International has a helpful online chat feature and an searchable database of titles they ship to Africa, but I learned that the books they send are mostly English along with French, Spanish, German, and some Arabic (though they have future plans for African language titles, and support African authors).

South African children reading story books in African languages
(photo from Joburg.org.za via article in Afrcomum.com)

Acquisition of locally published materials, which would in most cases be the main way to include materials in African languages, is limited by the amount and type of publications produced in the recipient countries. This is another key dimension to consider in the larger picture of reading and instruction materials in Africa, which in turn is a function of the nexus of limitations in resources for publishing in Africa, first-language literacy, incentives for authors writing in African languages, etc.

Even when locally published materials are included among those distributed, another potential issue is comparisons of quality of foreign books from the West in Europhone languages with locally produced books in African languages. In many African countries, at least as far as I am aware, materials in African languages are often printed on cheaper paper with a rougher presentation. What sort of message does disparity in quality of local and international books give to recipients of book donations?

That said, there are quality books published in Africa, as well as by some specialized publishers outside of the continent (this is a topic I hope to return to).

Can digital books redress the linguistic imbalance?

Some initiatives to provide e-books and other digital reading materials to students in Africa have at least announced their intention to include books in the African languages of the recipients.

For example, the Library for All project, which recently announced an initiative in Rwanda with Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Imbuto Foundation, has indicated it will include books in  Kinyarwanda, the first language of virtually all Rwandans. A post about the initiative elaborates on plans (apparently pending funding):

"We will add titles in English, French, Creole, Spanish and Lingala to our Haitian and Congolese Libraries, while also building our Rwandan collection of Kinyarwanda titles. Specifically, we will license an additional 200 books for the Library and translate 30 new books into local languages."

The Worldreader program boasts over 27,000 e-books in 43 languages, including the following African languages (links are to Wikipedia pages about the languages): "Adamawa" (meaning a variety of the Fula language spoken in an area centered on northern Cameroon), Afrikaans, Akan (they list the three old literary standards separately as Akuapem-Twi, Fante, and "Twi-Akan"); Amharic; Chichewa/Nyanja (they list the two names for this language separately); Dholuo; Ekegusii; Ewe; Gikuyu; Giriama (a Mijikenda language; also listed as Kigiriama in their list); Hausa; Igbo; Kamba; Kiembu; Kinyarwanda; Luganda; Luhyia; Lulogooli; Ndebele (not clear whether this is northern or southern Ndebele); Sesotho; Setswana; Shona; Swahili; Tetela; Xhosa; Yoruba; and Zulu. This is an impressive list, but I found no figures on how many titles for each language.

In addition to formal ebook projects, there are also some websites offering some reading material in African languages (other than news sites - another topic), such as that of the Ghanaian NGO, Kasahorow.

Altogether, these are significant beginnings at leveraging the potential of electronic digital technology to add African language titles among the books and other reading materials that African students and adults have access to.

Digital technology has always had this potential for languages that have a relatively short written tradition. The costs of bringing out e-books or other text content on the internet is a lot less, of course, than those incurred in printing, binding, storing and shipping physical books. Combined with the ability to access such reading material on mobile devices (which are widely used in Africa) and dedicated devices (provided by some programs), this offers the possibility to at least partially offset the linguistic imbalance discussed above. However, resources to create (or translate) e-books, favorable governmental and donor policies, and support for authors and translators are still needed.

See also the follow-on post, More on book donations to Africa.

Burning textbooks, beating schoolchildren

African languages have not only been passed over as languages of instruction and even omitted from school curricula in much of Africa, they have in some cases been actively excluded. While a full discussion of the issues involved would take something much longer than a blog post, I wanted to review a few facts and anecdotes. It should be noted that the worst abuses were in the colonial past.

Burning Tigre textbooks

One of the more striking examples from Ghirmai Negash's article (see the previous entry) was how in the 1970s in Eritrea, the ELF declared illegal a school curriculum in the Tigre language and ordered all copies of the school book to be burned.

This may be an extreme example but one from Madagascar in the 1980s may be more typical. Apparently the government of Madagascar at one point needed foreign assistance to produce textbooks for its schools. At the time the instruction was in Malagasy, but when France offered aid, it was with materials in French. (Unfortunately I don't have the reference at hand). It has been noted elsewhere that the UK and US are very forthcoming with materials in English. It would be hard to say how often English, French or Portuguese materials have replaced African language ones, or to what degree their availability has been a disincentive to develop African language materials.

Even when there are materials in African languages, they are not always well distributed. The article on International Mother Language Day in Ghana (available here, and mentioned in an earlier posting) mentions:

It is however very pathetic to note that while schools complain of lack of Ghanaian Language books which affects the teachers' delivery of lessons and consequently the performance of their pupils in their schools, publications of the Bureau [of Ghanaian Languages] are locked up in our ware houses in Tamale and Accra and are not being patronised.

So at least in some cases, books for learning in African languages have been burned, replaced by books in other languages, or "locked up" in warehouses. This is not even to mention those that are out of print and only available in distant libraries.

Beating or shaming schoolchildren for speaking their mother tongue

The history of schooling in Africa has many stories of how African languages were excluded from classes and school grounds (not always, but in many places) and punishments were meted out for transgressing the rule. I recently posed a question on the H-Africa list about the degree to which this is still happening. (It does still happen, but probably not as extreme as in the past.)

It is not only a question of teachers punishing students but also ways of involving peers in the punishment (see this example from a blog on Lesotho). There are some other links here (post #8).