African Storybook in West Cameroon

Chris Jackson, SIL

We discovered African Storybook (ASb) through their collaboration with Learning Equality. We were translating Learning Equality’s education management software system, Kolibri and Khan Academy Early Math into Fulfulde Mbororoore. While exploring other content available for download and use in Kolibri, we discovered a treasure trove of reading materials that are free for translation, download and use.

We really do love African Storybook! It is a great initiative. The storybooks are so colourful and engaging. It is even better that almost all of them are African-origin stories, thus more relevant to the students’ lives and experiences.

We have translated about 20 titles from the ASb website into Fulfulde Mbororoore and intend to do more. They are a part of additional reading resources available for our Fulfulde literacy workshops. Having these colourful, interesting and fun books available in both digital and free-to-download-and-print format is wonderful. We are using them in both ways. When our students go home, we ask which title they want us to print for them so they can have at least one book to take home.

We use these storybooks for our Fulfulde literacy classes held each dry season, as well as in other situations when possible. We have also promoted the use of ASb storybooks in other minority languages in Cameroon to help build a library of reading resources.

Recently, as a result of Coronavirus, we have been running a community learning programme each afternoon at the center where we live in rural Cameroon. We have secondary school students who come every afternoon to make use of our Kolibri learning system, which has been loaded with secondary school content from Khan Academy and other resources. Because these students live in a place where there are no libraries, I added the 1300+ titles of English-version books for them to read at their leisure. Thus far, we have approximately 20 students coming regularly, and it is gradually growing. Many of them are reading through the books - they have never had so many books to read!

Here’s a picture of one of our classrooms with social distancing and Kolibri in action. This is where I introduced African Storybook to these students and they began reading the books independently.

In addition to the older students, we have a 9-year-old girl coming to make use of our Kolibri offline learning system. She is not at a level where she can effectively work independently. So, we work with her individually to help her move forward. The two pictures below capture the flexibility of African Storybook: sometimes I print out a book for her to take home and practice reading it, while on a daily basis we do reading practice with digital books in Kolibri.

In total, we have 50 adult learners using the books in their literacy classes in Fulfulde, and 20 secondary school students reading-at-leisure the 1300+ titles of English version books available on our Kolibri system. We will soon expand the content to include French titles and French content for the francophone students who live here. These are freely available to these students to read when they want. Many of them have been reading and enjoying them.

Read Soobiraaɓe Famarɓe Ɗiɗo and Ɓanndu. You can find more Fulfulde Mbororoore storybooks, and many others, in over 200 African languages on our website.