WUNRN
AFGHANISTAN - WOMEN LEARN LITERACY
WITH MOBILE PHONES
The phone is called Ustad Mobile (Mobile Teacher) and provides national
curriculum courses in both national languages, Dari and Pashto, as well as
mathematics.
All the lessons are audio-video, with writing, pronunciation and phrases
installed in Ustad Mobile phones — and they are distributed free to students.
Sat on a carpet in a small
“I could not go to school because the Taliban took control of
“Since I heard about this literacy training center for women, I convinced my
father and he allowed me to attend on a daily basis,” she said.
Nazari is delighted with the program, which is being rolled out by a commercial
provider and the ministry of education with financial backing from the
The Mobile Teacher software was developed by Paiwastoon, an Afghan IT company,
with $80,000 dollars in
Despite millions of girls now attending school,
“This is the first time audio-visual literacy learners have the chance to
receive lessons on their cellphones,” Mike Dawson, CEO of Paiwastoon, told AFP.
The company has experience in the field, having previously managed the “One
Laptop Per Child” program that handed out 3,000 computers to women and children
in
“We can make the job of the teachers easier by using the video and the audio
and the questions and exercises,”
“Cellphones are cheaper than any computer and people are familiar with it. And
also, the maintenance is much easier.”
The free app can be installed on all mobile phones with a memory card slot and
a camera. Individual lessons, which will also be made available on the ministry
of education website, will teach new words and phrases.
“We try to get to as many people as possible. The other thing, we can add more
subjects like English, Arabic, Pashtu, health, agriculture,”
“For rolling out Ustad Mobile — we are looking to talk with the phone companies
and the media to make people aware of the program.
“We interviewed phone shop owners about the software and they are willing to install
it for people like they install other software on mobiles,”
“People don’t realize how powerful these phones are, they work like computers.”
At the moment, some 100 students are using the Mobile Teacher in a pilot
project in
“Our focus and target is mostly on uneducated women,” said director of
programs, Allah Baz
The ministry would do everything it could to promote the Ustad Mobile for women
and would also distribute the software on CDs and DVDs, he told AFP.
At the pilot project class in
“And later, I got married. Now with the permission of my husband, I’ve come to
the literacy center to learn to read and write.”
The Taliban were ousted by a US-led invasion in 2001, and have since waged an
insurgency against the Western-backed government of President Karzai.
Today, of
But US-led NATO troops will withdraw from
For now, though, the Mobile Teacher is bringing new hope to those who missed
their chance of an education in the past.
Agence France-Presse