Storytelling for mobilists

Nkosinathi’s biggest dream — to become a famous football player — was shattered when his football team dropped him. Luckily, he was given a second shot when an old football pro offered to train him.

Angela never knew her father. But his location and identity are now the least of Angela’s problems. She just found out she’s pregnant — at the tender age of 17.

Nkosinathi and Angela are the lead characters in two tales in a series of short stories designed to boost young people’s interest in the written word. These stories are not available in any traditional library nor can they be bought in a bookstore. Nkosinathi and Angela’s stories, along with many others, are part of Yoza, which stands out among a new breed of innovative libraries targeting young cell phone users.

This library is a product of the m4Lit — or mobiles for literacy — project of the Shuttleworth Foundation, a South African nonprofit that supports the use of information and communication technologies to improve teaching and learning strategies in the country. Starting with a single mobile novel in September 2009, Yoza now offers more than 35 m-novels written by local authors, using conventional language in a hip and “youthful” way. After all, Yoza’s main goal is to “captivate teens and inspire them to catch the reading bug,” as the team behind the initiative puts it.

But why offer the stories through mobile phones? The answer is simple, and one the development community has picked up on with a vengeance: The proliferation of mobile phones today make these portable gadgets increasingly valuable tools for aid workers. And in South Africa, Yoza’s m-novels have hit a nerve.

South Africa is “book-poor” but “cellphone-rich,” according to Yoza founder Steve Vosloo, a fellow at the Shuttleworth Foundation. Only a small percentage of South African households own books but 90 percent of urban youth in the country own cell phones, the Yoza team has found. By bringing engaging short novels to the handheld devices, Vosloo and his team are encouraging young folks to read more and possibly even write their own stories.

Yoza’s m-novels have proved quite popular. One of Yoza’s best-sellers — an adventure story named “Kontax” — was downloaded and read more by more than 10,000 users in the first few months of its full release. This is way more than the standard 5,000 sales of best-selling printed novels in South Africa.

Yoza makes use of various strategies to make sure its teenage users, given their short attention span, remain engaged and interested. Each story in the library is serialized into short “episodes” of around 400 words. Users can download episodes, for the equivalent of $0.01 cent each, from the Yoza website or from Facebook and the popular South African networking site Mxit. Think soap opera or a television series, only in written form and accessible through cell phones.

Readers can provide feedback on every chapter they read. Some stories, such as Kontax and the coming-of-age story “Confessions of a Troubled Young Man,” include polls and questions at the end of each chapter, asking the readers how they would act if put in a situation similar to what they have just read.

Those interactive features illustrate Yoza’s goal: engage teenagers on the issues they care about. Peer pressure. Teenage pregnancy. HIV/AIDS. Domestic violence. Teen angst. Career and money. These are only a few of the topics Yoza m-novels cover.

And that’s why Yoza, in effect, functions also as a tool to educate and advise young people about issues they may not feel comfortable discussing openly with friends or family.

The Yoza team plans to bring its m-novels to other African countries. Next up: Kenya, where a version of “Kontax” is already available, putting socially engaged reading materials at the fingertips of today’s teenagers — and tomorrow’s leaders.

Read last week’s #innov8aid.