23 August 2010, 06:00 p.m.

South Africa’s Shuttleworth Foundation has announced an innovative new project to get young people to read.

Yoza is the name of a new mobi-novel library available on cellphones that will hopefully boost literacy under teens. The novels are interactive and available for free. At the moment the library is available in South Africa and Kenya but the foundation hopes to soon have it available in all of Africa.

Steve Vosloo, the founder of Yoza said: “For the foreseeable future the cellphone, not the Kindle or iPad, is the e-reader of Africa. Yoza aims to capitalize on that to get Africa's teens reading and writing.”

In 2009 the foundation decided to test the water and see if South African teens would read stories on their cellphones. The Shuttleworth Foundation published a 20 pages-long story, called Kontax, last year and invited readers to leave comment and also to enter their own stories in an exciting, writing competition.

This soon resulted in another Kontax story being published and soon these two stories were read 34 000 times while 4000 entries were received for the writing competition.

Due to the enthusiasm for the mobile story, the Shuttleworth Foundation then decided to launch Yoza, a mobile library of stories.

The new library was launched yesterday.

Yoza is available on www.yoza.mobi and on MXit (go to Tradepost > MXit Cares > mobiBooks) on all WAP-enabled cellphones, as well as on Facebook (search for Yoza Cellphone Stories).

According to a statement by the Shuttleworth Foundation Yoza’s goal is to get young people reading and writing, and in the ‘book-poor’ but ‘cellphone-rich’ context of South Africa, the phone is a viable complement and sometimes alternative to a printed book.

“Books are scarce and prohibitively expensive for most South Africans. Stats show that 51% of households in South Africa do not own a single leisure book, while an elite 6% of households own 40 books or more. Only 7% of schools have functioning libraries,” the foundation states.

“What South Africa’s teens do have access to are cellphones, with stats indicating that 90% of urban youth have their own cellphone. The take up and interaction with the first two Kontax stories published in English and isiXhosa clearly demonstrates that cellphones are a viable platform for local teen reading and writing. There is no charge for the actual stories, but users do pay their mobile network operator for mobile data traffic. Images have been kept to a minimum to keep the mobile data charges low – these data charges on local cellphones range from 5c to 9c per chapter, making Yoza m-novels a very affordable option for great reading material for teens.

“Over the next six months the plan for Yoza is to build a library of cellphone stories of multiple genres that are available to teens not only in South Africa, but ultimately throughout Africa. Kontax has already been published in Kenya through MXit. Competitions with airtime prizes prompt readers to participate in the interactive questions at the end of chapters, keeping readers engaged and coming back for more,” the Foundation said in its statement.

What can you read in the Yoza library?
•    Kontax, the flagship title about a group of four teenage friends in Cape Town.
•    Streetskillz is a brand new soccer series written by talented young writer and soccer fanatic Charlie Human.
•    Sisterz is a sassy new series by local chic lit star Fiona Snyckers.
•    Confessions of a Virgin Loser by talented, thoughtful novelist Edyth Bulbring is the story of a Johannesburg boy steering his way through the complicated world of peer pressure, teenage sex and HIV/AIDS, while just trying to be a cool kid at school.

 “We are looking to grow the library of stories as well as a vibrant community of young users who not only read the stories but participate in the commenting, reviewing and writing of them. We’re turning reading into a social, sharing experience,” Vosloo said.