Why South Africa is failing its children and what people are doing to try to solve the problem.
[F]ewer than 7% of schools in South Africa have a functioning library. Perhaps 21% have some kind of structure called a reading room, but these are usually used for classrooms, are seldom stocked properly and do not have a library professional in charge to ensure that the right books are there and that they are used properly. The lack of libraries compounds the many problems, such as teachers’ poor subject knowledge and poor access to textbooks, that plague our schooling system. These factors combine to make our reading outcomes, at all grade levels, among the worst in Africa.
The contrast with industries that have figured out how to reach the same children is hard to miss. Sports betting apps have spread rapidly across South Africa over the past decade, with operators sponsoring Premier Soccer League clubs, saturating broadcast advertising, and embedding themselves in the daily language of teenagers. A child who has never sat down with a properly stocked school library can usually name several of these platforms on demand. The infrastructure gap, in other words, is not a failure of demand for young people’s attention — it is a failure of who, in this country, is willing to compete for it.