Minister of Basic Education, Ms Siviwe Gwarube, attended the official announcement of the 2025 AVBOB Road to Literacy Campaign beneficiaries at the Sandton Hotel on 29 May 2025. Now in its fourth year, the AVBOB Road to Literacy Campaign, in partnership with Oxford University Press South Africa (OUPSA), is one of South Africa’s most extensive mobile library initiatives, aimed at improving access to books for young learners, schools and communities across all nine provinces.
AVBOB CEO Mr Carl van der Riet explained that, “this year’s campaign marks a significant expansion, with 1,000 schools and NGOs set to receive trolley libraries, each stocked with 500 books aligned to the national curriculum and available in all 11 official languages. The total number of books distributed in 2025 exceeds 500,000, doubling the impact made in the previous year. Each library trolley is valued at R57,000, bringing the total investment in this year’s campaign to R57 million”.
The milestone event commenced with a learner reading a story from a book written in her mother tongue. The panel discussion that followed, led by 702 Breakfast host, Mr Bongani Bingwa, focussed on advancing literacy and numeracy in the foundational phase through equitable access to books. The Minister was joined by Mr van der Riet, Oxford University Press SA MD, Ms Karen Simpson and Executive Director of the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls, Ms Gugu Ndebele. Ms Simpson said that, “our responsibility is to supply the right books at the right reading levels in all languages for learners to be able to read for meaning”. Ms Ndebele highlighted the importance of an early start: “Children must identify with the characters and read stories from settings and cultures they can associate with, to read with meaning and enjoyment”.
During the panel discussion, Minister Gwarube indicated that access to education was no longer a challenge. “Now, we have to infuse quality into our education for children in disadvantaged rural communities. We obsess about the National Senior Certificate (NSC) examination results, but have been neglecting Foundations for Learning. Research shows that over 80% of South African learners cannot read for meaning in any language by the age of 10. This means that children are moving through primary school without the essential building blocks for lifelong learning. For this reason, we have identified Foundational Learning as a priority during the 7th Administration. When we lay solid foundations, we get the later years right, including Mathematics and Literacy”.
The Minister added that, “a child should learn in their mother tongue, and our emphasis is now on children aged 0-4 years-old to the end of the Foundation Phase. With the migration of ECD to Basic Education, we are ensuring that registered ECD Centres have qualified practitioners, an approved curriculum, a government subsidy per child and nutrition for development. However, another important focus is to create safe schools for our learners and teachers for them to thrive in safe and dignified environments. Partnerships such as these are crucial; education is not only a social issue, but an economic investment and I have been overwhelmed by the response from corporate SA: together we can create a better future for our children”.