• The new reading app being tested by the CSIR hopes to aid children gain reading comprehension in their home languages.
• It uses AI text generation to help learners craft sentences and then evaluates their reading and pronunciation.
• It is currently being piloted with grade 3 learners in Soweto and Mamelodi.

In a bid to tackle the latest spate of illiteracy across South Africa, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has launched a new mobile app to help teach young children to read for comprehension in their home languages.

A 2023 report from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) detailed how South Africans are struggling with illiteracy. The country ranked the lowest of more than 57 nations that took part in the study.

It showed how eight out of 10 grade 4 South African learners cannot read for meaning in any language, whether their first or second.

“Without this essential skill, South African children are deprived of the opportunity to fulfil their true potential, with the impact being the most devastating for those from disadvantaged communities,” CSIR explained in an announcement, per state media.

The new app is called Ngiyaqonda! which is isiZulu for “I understand.” It was reportedly funded by the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture and was built using the bones of an earlier project led by the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR).

“This app provides learners with a dynamic digital learning environment in their home language and English. While children are taught in their home language from Grades 1 to 3, the medium of instruction for most South African learners starting from Grade 4 is English,” said the council.

This is how the app works: it allows learners to listen to sentences spoken by a computer-generated voice and then create their own sentences using guidance from the app’s text-generation engine.

“The application harnesses so-called translanguaging principles, such as using translation between the home language and a target language typically English to ensure that learners really understand what they are reading,” it added.

It currently allows for translanguaging of isiZulu, Sepedi, English and Afrikaans with plans to add more of South Africa’s 11 spoken languages in the future. The reading app currently in a pilot phase in 2023 and 2024 with learners in Soweto in Johannesburg, and Mamelodi in Pretoria.

Efforts of improving literacy go against the Department of Basic Education’s own comments on the matter, which in 2023 said that “The truth is that South Africa is not a nation of readers” and that the PIRLS results are “an indication of deeper challenges.”

A further study conducted in 2023 suggested that illiteracy in South Africa is costing the economy around $6.7 billion a year, due to South Africans being adequately educated to contribute more meaningfully to the economy.

It said that the 13 percent of adults in South Africa that are illiterate adversely affects the productivity and profitability of businesses, which have to deal with costs accrued when processing incorrect orders, handing out refunds, losing customers due to poor communication or resolving other internal problems.

The reading app from CSIR may not be a full solution for the issues around South African education, but it may make a different albeit a small one.