Cellphones ignite a 'reading revolution' in poor countries

Illiteracy isn't a major issue for much of the Western world, but it remains endemic in many developing countries, where incomes are low and books are scarce.

That may be changing, though, thanks to the spread of mobile technologies that have made books more accessible than ever before -- something that UNESCO, in a new report, describes as a veritable "reading revolution." The report examines the reading habits of nearly 5,000 mobile-phone users in seven countries -- Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Zimbabwe -- where the average illiteracy rate among children is 20 percent, and 34 percent among adults. (The US, by comparison, has an adult illiteracy rate of around three percent.)

UNESCO describes the survey as the largest ever undertaken on mobile reading in the developing world, and its results are encouraging: people are reading more, they're reading to their children, and they're hungry for more content.

The study was based on questionnaires and telephone interviews with people who use an app from Worldreader -- a San Francisco-based nonprofit that distributes e-books in low-income countries. The organization delivers Kindles to under-equipped classrooms, while its app allows users to choose from over 6,000 (mostly free) e-books on low-end feature phones. Today, the app has more than 300,000 monthly active users in developing countries, and Worldreader says it's delivered nearly 1.7 million e-books since its launch in 2010.

There is evidence to suggest that mobile technology can improve literacy test scores, though UNESCO's study focuses on the behaviors and demographics of users in developing countries, in the hopes of better understanding how and why they read. More than 62 percent of those surveyed said they enjoy reading more after they started reading on mobile devices, and one-third said they use their phones to read to their children (an additional third said they would do so if more child-friendly books were available).

The survey also shed light on important gender-based differences. Although the vast majority of mobile readers are male (77 percent), women actually devote far more time to reading: 277 minutes per month, on average, compared to just 33 minutes for men.