The Regional Director-West Africa for Worldreader, Leslie Ofosu Tettey, has said that a survey conducted by the organisation shows that only 7 percent of children in Ghana have access to books in their home for reading purposes.

According to him, this represents a huge deficit in the country’s efforts to inculcate and improve the habit of reading books, and to boost knowledge of children, even at early stages of their development.

Speaking in an interview with GhanaWeb on May 17, Leslie Tettey said that to bridge this gap, parents in particular must create a conducive environment to support their children’s learning and reading abilities.

“We believe that parents must begin to support and engage their children in reading, which is critical, and at Worldreader, we are providing digital and innovative solutions that has several books.

"Also, a study conducted in India and Ghana in 2021 showed that most Ghanaians are using their mobile phones and digital devices for social connections but few of them realise that they can use these same devices for learning purposes,” Leslie Tettey told GhanaWeb after a media briefing in Accra.

He further noted that parents must be supported through these digital solutions to encourage their children to read wide in a conducive environment at home; where they can cultivate a natural reading habit.

“The truth is that if children don’t build the skills to read with comprehension, learning can never happen and so it's very critical for them to start early because data has showed that one of key problem among children in Ghana is delayed learning which make it difficult to catch up so parent are key factor to addressing this through digital means and creation of a conducive environment,” he added.

Meanwhile, Worldreader has further discovered that about 64 percent of children in the world, aged 10-years, cannot read and understand a simple story.

In view of this, Worldreader, through its BookSmart reading experience, is helping children to read more, improve their socio-emotional learning and comprehension, as well their digital literacy skills.

MA/AE