- YouScribe, a French-based digital reading library with over a million users, has partnered with Digital Virgo and MTN to launch services in Ghana.
- The digital reading library is also collaborating with Ghanaian publishers such as Adaex Edu, Subsaharan Publishers, and distributor African Books Collective to expand the catalogue with local content tailored specifically to the Ghanaian audience.
- According to YouScribe founder and CEO, Juan Pirlot de Corbion, "The launch of YouScribe in Ghana is an important and ambitious step in our aspiration to connect cultures through a multilingual digital library featuring authors from all over the continent."
With this development, prospective readers will be able to purchase a daily subscription for GH₵ 0.75 (approximately US$0.06), which will grant them access to a digital catalogue containing nearly 200,000 English-language ebooks, numerous press titles, and thousands of audiobooks and comic books.
Ghana now joins South Africa as the second English-speaking country to welcome the platform. It is already present in approximately 11 Francophone African countries, including Tunisia, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Morocco, Guinea, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Mali.
According to Statista, Ghana's ePublishing market is expected to generate US$35.49 million in revenue in 2024, with a 4.09% annual growth rate (CAGR 2024-2027), resulting in a projected market volume of US$40.02 million by 2027.
The rise of local authors using digital platforms to share their stories with a global audience has fueled the sector's growth. With a projected user penetration of 17.1% in 2024, the market's reader base is expected to reach 6.1 million by 2027.
Renaud Ganascia, Digital Virgo's Africa Head of Sales, announced that the mobile operator will continue to work with MTN and YouScribe to reach a large number of mobile customers across the continent.
“This is a service that, beyond the engagement it generates, is particularly close to our hearts for its social and societal impact," he added.
Amid this development, a report by Statista revealed that in the third quarter of 2023, 99.7 percent of Internet users in Ghana had smartphones, with an Internet penetration of about 70% as of January 2024
