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This paper was written for the 5th IBBY Africa Regional Meeting, which was held 29 August-1 September 2019 in Accra, Ghana. The conference took as its theme: the importance of illustrations in children’s books.

This paper was written for the 5th IBBY Africa Regional Meeting, which was held 29 August-1 September 2019 in Accra, Ghana. The conference took as its theme: the importance of illustrations in children’s books.

Openly licensed resources are ‘free’ to access, but there are significant creation, adaptation, production, and use costs. The long-term sustainability of local-language publishing requires that these costs be met fairly, using financial models that will enable people to establish, grow, and maintain effective content creation organizations.

This presentation was created for the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) workshop in Nairobi on National Book and Reading Policies for Africa from 17th to 19th June 2019. The presentation addresses issues related to the cost of storybook creation and adaptation of storybooks. 

This presentation was delivered delivered on 22 May, 2019 at the 3^rd African Library & Information Association (AfLIA) Conference and 5^th African Library Summit, held at the Weston Hotel in Nairobi, Kenya. The theme of the conference was ‘African libraries creating the Africa we want and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals’.

A key barrier to improving children's reading skills is limited or no access to textbooks and reading materials. An open education resource (OER) policy could help progress Early Grade Reading (EGR) efforts and is now a policy requirement for all United States Government-funded projects. Can stakeholders in the book production chain embrace an OER model, finding benefit in the approach for their businesses?

Restrictive copyrights can limit how likely reading resources are to be used, shared or repurposed, which significantly diminishes the potential impact of the materials.  Donors and international organizations are increasingly investing in open educational resources, as they are interested in ensuring that educational materials reach the greatest possible number of learners, and that broad access to those material

To teach young children to read, teachers and students need textbooks, lesson plans, and reading materials that are aligned with each other and with the science of reading. Books should also be procured at reasonable costs, and delivered to every classroom before the start of the school year.

Most classrooms in low-income countries lack sufficient instructional resources, despite substantial investment in textbooks and other teaching and learning materials (TLM) over decades. One major cause of this continuing scarcity is that complex, costly, and opaque supply chains cause books to go missing or be delayed. Past attempts at developing distribution management solutions have been overly complex, too project-specific, and/or too expensive, making broad-scale adoption impossible.

Read@Home’s Track and Trace (R@HTnT) app is a revolutionary low-cost platform designed to bring transparency and efficiency to the TLM supply chain. Whether it’s a school textbook, teacher guide, book for reading practice, or tablet, ensuring TLMs get from the production point and into students’ hands is crucial. The open-source app, funded by the World Bank’s Read@Home initiative, can ensure that every stakeholder has real-time visibility into the journey of their TLMs and allow them to solve problems and correct issues that arise along the way.

La plupart des salles de classe des pays à faible revenu manquent de ressources pédagogiques suffisantes, malgré des investissements importants dans les manuels scolaires et autres matériels d'enseignement et d'apprentissage (TLM) au cours des dernières décennies. L'une des principales causes de cette pénurie persistante est que les chaînes d'approvisionnement complexes, coûteuses et opaques entraînent la disparition ou le retard des livres. Les tentatives passées de développement de solutions de gestion de la distribution ont été trop complexes, trop spécifiques à un projet et/ou trop coûteuses, ce qui a rendu impossible leur adoption à grande échelle.

L'application Track and Trace (R@HTnT) de Read@Home est une plateforme révolutionnaire à faible coût conçue pour apporter transparence et efficacité à la chaîne d'approvisionnement des TLM. Qu'il s'agisse d'un manuel scolaire, d'un guide de l'enseignant, d'un livre de lecture ou d'une tablette, il est essentiel de s'assurer que les TLM parviennent du point de production jusqu'aux élèves. L'application open source, financée par l'initiative Read@Home de la Banque mondiale, permet à chaque partie prenante de suivre en temps réel le parcours de ses TLM et de résoudre les problèmes qui surviennent en cours de route.

This updated primer discusses challenges and issues faced by content creators, such as publishers, authors, illustrators, and teachers, all of whom have a stake in producing high-quality and cost-effective materials for education. This version includes lessons learned from the COVID-19 lockdowns, technology challenges that still impede access to digital content, and the tradeoffs between digital access and print.

La plupart des salles de classe des pays à faible revenu manquent de ressources pédagogiques, malgré les investissements substantiels dans les manuels scolaires et autres matériels d'enseignement et d'apprentissage sur plusieurs décennies.

This note outlines the World Bank’s Read@Home initiative’s recommendations for a “first collection” of children’s
literature. It is intended for Read@Home and other early reading programs involved in the development and/or
selection of books to support children’s pre-reading and early reading skills.