The Role of African Librarians in Early Literacy: Report on an AfLIA Short Course

The African Library and Information Associations and Institutions (AfLIA) and NBA developed a short online course for African librarians and library staff, based on the findings of a survey conducted in 2021. The main course objectives were to:

• Train African public and community librarians and library staff to gain an understanding and practice techniques for teaching children vocabulary development, as well as print and phonemic awareness in mother tongue and English. When children are exposed to literacy-rich environments with age-appropriate resources in their mother tongue, they are better equipped to internalize learning as part of their everyday lives.
• Lead the participants to a deeper understanding of how to encourage children to fall in love with stories and reading.
• Use open licensing to increase appropriate reading resources for the target age group through the translation of existing stories into mother-tongue languages.

This report provides a summary of the findings from the pilot od this course, run during April and May 2022.