Kindles in Africa

I still don’t have an e-reader (add it to the list of new technologies I don’t adopt), but a program run by a former Amazon executive is working hard to get Kindles into schools in Ghana, Kenya and soon Rwanda. Almost a month ago, the New York Times ran an article about this project, which currently has 3500 Kindles in schools through the non-profit Worldreader. This got me thinking about whether or not such a program is a good idea.

Pros

There are several pros to such a program, but I think these are a few of the most important ones:

1. No trees are used. If we were to get one book to each of the seven billion people on the planet, that’s a lot of trees. E-readers allow us to cut down on this paper usage, although donating used copies of books would have the same effect on total paper usage.

2. About half of the books are either African textbooks or storybooks, which is great. It gives students an opportunity to explore literature written by fellow Africans and hopefully allows them access to more current textbooks than would otherwise be available.

3. Cheaper shipping. Actually, I don’t know if this is really true, but it seems like a reasonable assumption. We ship one Kindle, opening up access to potentially thousands of books. Shipping those thousands of books must surely cost more than shipping the Kindle, especially if you include textbooks.

4. Costs are subsidized. I don’t know how much of the cost is covered by the subsidies, but the website does say that books from African publishers are about $3.50 each.

5. Increased access to books can help increase literacy (I suppose, assuming that there are enough teachers to go around).

6. Kindles use low amounts of energy, and Worldreader helps find a solution in areas with unreliable power or no internet access, which could then be used for more than just charging Kindles and downloading books.

Cons

Some of the first concerns that occurred to me when I heard about the project were:

1. The potential for waste. Even though there are no trees used, what’s the environmental impact? Are there rare earth minerals in these units that are either hard to mine or difficult to dispose of? How are broken Kindles disposed of?

2. Kindles are made in China, so any jobs resulting from selling more Kindles will go to China. Similar problems exist when donating used books, and the availability of free used books could increase competition for local bookstores. On the other hand (and the Worldreader website mentions this), local jobs could be available if they train people locally to repair any broken Kindles.

3. Potential issues with licensing – what happens to the e-books if a publisher decides to withdraw from the program or if the non-profit closes? There should be something in place that ensures a permanent license to the books.

Wow, when I break it out that way, it’s pretty clear that the pros outweigh the cons (or else I’ve completely overlooked some key issues with the idea). Either way, I intend to keep an eye on this non-profit, since I strongly believe that education is key to reducing poverty.