CFA's Tech Blog – Transforming Africa

Has Digitalised Books Increased the Numbers of Readers?

“If you want to hide something from an African, hide it in a book.” – Unknown Author

This quote isn’t far being the truth, as many Africans, especially Nigerians who are yet to entirely embrace the reading culture. Although some Nigerians could claim they have cultivated that reading culture, the fact remains that they have shot lifespan.

The short lifespan reading culture emanates as a result of many factors such as reading as a result of a forthcoming exam. Once the exam is taken, they stop reading. This is a habit that is common amongst Nigerians.

Besides, there are Nigerians who read as a result of the pleasure, which sounds great and encouraging. They read any book, not minding how voluminous it is.

Today, the reading format has changed significantly, you now have the digital format instead of the paper, and I am not saying you cannot get a book. There are still books, but lots of books are now digitalised. This may probably have added to the number of people that read considering the fact that smartphone has become rampant. However, some are still of the school of thought that print books are even better.

Here are some analysis of print and Ebook, this would give you a broad view of both arguments and help you form an opinion as to which would work better for you.

Here are the some of the disadvantages of these two

1. E-books could be sometimes distracting especially when reading from phones, a message might just pop up, and in the quest to check them, one might get carried away and the stop reading.

2. Prints can sometimes be tedious as the size could be a turnoff, one might get tired of moving these books around.

Their advantages include;

1. Prints are the officially recognized books worldwide at least for now, so when one is asked to purchase a book in school, copies are the only acceptable ones.

2. There is ease of convenience of reading from eBooks as one doesn’t have to carry about a big book since very voluminous print books can fit into our smartphones in little kilobytes.

Conclusively, knowledge is power so whichever medium you decide to explore, go ahead and have fun reading and gain wisdom.