News & Articles

Many years ago, the influential children’s literacy scholar Margaret Spencer Meek remarked, “Every child needs three books at the same time ‒ one that they can read whatever happens, one they are reading at the moment, and one they’re just about able to read. The first the child reads, the second you help them to read and the third, you read to him or…

Barbara Comber is a Research Professor in the Faculty of Education at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. She is particularly interested in literacy education and social justice and recently visited South Africa, further sharing her work on the topic: Sharing stories of one kind or another with the next generation is something intrinsic to everyday life in most communities. Listening to parents and…

Sindiwe Magona, an accomplished South African writer, literary activist and retired teacher, is a judge in Nal’ibali’s storytelling competition being run this September and will help crown South Africa’s first ‘Story Bosso’. Sindiwe, who has grown up on stories, feels that our identity is inseparable from the stories we tell: In traditional societies, stories were an integral part of the socialisation of the child. They were…

Alinah Segobye is an academic, writer, storyteller and futurist. She holds an honorary professorship at the Thabo Mbeki African Leadership Institute and is the former Deputy Executive Director at the Human Sciences Research Council in South Africa. Alinah explores the role of technology in developing a reading culture in Africa: How did the first rock-art artist get inspired? Was it a young doodler sent to…

As Africans, we have a deep history of storytelling and one that is in danger of being left behind as we move into an increasingly digital way of life. To celebrate the power of storytelling, Nal’ibali, the national reading-for-enjoyment campaign, recently ran a countrywide storytelling talent search, Story Bosso. In the process of inviting all South Africans, young and old, to share their stories,…