Africa: Teaching Us A New Way To Learn!

The world might be surprised to get A Note On The Future from Africa, but that is precisely what’s happening. And the topic? A new way we learn.

While learning and education is one of the highest priorities on the African continent, according to an article in the Fast Company magazine and a recent report from UNESCO, physical books are increasingly not the way Africans are getting that education. Physical books and other physical learning materials are expensive, and often hard to source, resource, and secure in many parts of Africa.

But in Africa and Africans usual, innovative and 'work-around-it-until-I-find-a-fix-for-it' manner, creative and smart people on the Continent are doing the next best thing to reading a physical book — they’re using their cellphones to read electronic ones!

To quote my friend former President Bill Clinton, “Africa could easily become the first wireless continent.” And I agree with him completely.

Of the one billion people on the African continent, there are presently 650 million mobile phone subscriptions serving them. And growing. Not bad for a collection of so-called developing countries, on a so-called 'dark Continent.'

Now, it is also true that most of these mobiles are what we might call basic phones, but the smart phone market is the one that is actually poised to grow the most over the next decade. Some would replace the word grow with explode.

Far from being a problem, this could be a watershed moment for education in the world. This includes a possible 'teachable moment' for the sort of education that I am most passionate about and focused on these days ~ financial literacy and economic inclusion, that leads to financial and economic empowerment. Talk about a powerful platform for change. It's literally, in your hands.

The mobile phone allows for innovators, entrepreneurs, software producers, intellectual property right creators and service providers, to create new and innovative education-based products. Products that actually reach this new market where they (increasingly) live — on their mobile devices.

Here are a few crisp and captivating out-takes from the Fast Company story:

“More people are using their ‘rudimentary small-screen devices’ to read books, according to a new UNESCO study.”

"The study found more and more people in countries including Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, and Pakistan are using their 'rudimentary small-screen devices' to read books, and the literacy rate is improving accordingly. A third of the 4,000 study participants are using their mobile phones to read books—and not just, say, text messages.”

As the report goes on to note, in Africa book scarcity is a real problem. Even in upper middle-income countries like South Africa, 51% of households own no leisure books, and 7% of schools have no libraries whatsoever.

Mobile penetration, on the other hand, is growing at an astonishing rate in Africa, hitting 80% as of December. On a phone, an open-access book can cost as little as 2 to 3 cents, the report notes.

And this could easily be a global phenomena.

According to Silicon India, by the end of 2014, there will be more mobile phones in the world than people, or more than 7.3 billion cellphones.

In more than 100 countries in the world, the number of cellphones already exceed the countries population.

There is a whole generation of mainstream, developed-nation young people that seem to be following Africa’s lead here.

For instance, many of today’s young generation, all across the world, are effectively 'opting out' of a traditional landline phone altogether for their home,. They are increasingly selecting their mobile phone as both their primary home base of contact with the outside world, and their primary business, learning, communications and engagement tool too.

Most everywhere you go these days, you see something like 3 out of 4 people, heads down, looking at some personal handheld devise screen.

People use to laugh at the idea of doing anything other than say a simple email, on a what was at one point almost exclusively a handheld Blackberry devise here in the states. Now, these same people are not only typing on a very small virtual keyboard with ease and comfort, on say an iPhone, but they are actively engaged in serious stuff on these devises also. You actually might be reading this article from one right now!

This is precisely what the people in remote villages and urban townships in Africa had in mind. Empowerment through education, any way they can get it.

And this is the lesson that Africa, in this example, has to share with the rest of the world. What’s that often used quote of mine — you cannot have a rainbow without a storm first. Precisely appropriate here, and most true in Africa.

So thank you mother Africa. You have led us into a new era of understanding and learning, once again.

This time, its actually new way to learn. And that's a twist worthy of note.

Let's go...

John Hope Bryant is the Founder, Chairman and CEO of Operation HOPE and Bryant Group Companies, Inc. Magazine/CEO READ bestselling business author of LOVE LEADERSHIP: The New Way to Lead in a Fear-Based World (Jossey-Bass), and is the only 2010-2012 bestselling business author in America who is also African-American. His newest book, due out June, 2014, is HOW THE POOR CAN SAVE CAPITALISM, and will be published by Berrett Koehler Publishing. Bryant is a Member of the U.S. President's Advisory Council on Financial Capability for Young Americans,and co-chair for Project 5117, which is a plan for the rebirth of underserved America.

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Photo Credit: Erik (HASH) Hersman and Jan Bogaerts