At first, the Zenex Foundation believed that helping learners in Mathematics and Science was the best way to address the education crisis. Then it realised that, first, it needed to help learners with their home languages.

The Zenex Foundation and partner organisations have launched a series of African languages storybooks and reading material that can be used to supplement learner curriculums in an effort to improve the South African literacy rate.

According to the 2021 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (Pirls) report released in May this year, 81% of Grade 4 learners in South Africa cannot read for meaning in any language, which shows an alarming increase from 78% in 2016. The report also found that it was mostly African language schools that recorded a decline in reading, while English and Afrikaans schools did not. Limpopo, North West, Free State and Mpumalanga performed particularly poorly.

At the Zenex Foundation's launch of the new reading material, literacy specialist and senior lecturer Dr Xolisa Guzula, from the University of Cape Town, said: "It saddens me to think that when we think about creating African language materials people say, 'No, that can't be done because they don't have a standard language'.

"I think people need to get rid of that thinking ... In our teaching of languages, we need to value the children's varieties of languages when they come to our classrooms and see them...