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Even in the 21 st century, the need of support in literacy acquisition around the world remains huge. Data presented in a UNESCO-commissioned report (Education for All, 2014) estimates that 250 million children worldwide need reading support, with the largest number of countries in need located in Sub-Saharan Africa. Having poor reading skills is a huge problem for the individuals themselves as well as their societies. In today’s information societies, the majority of learning materials are mediated via written text. Thus, literacy is vital for individuals’ quality of life, their educations, career choices, and thus to the world economy and the development of democracy. In all societies and in all age groups, the implications of poor reading skills are both personal and societal. Yet although the outcome (poor reading skills) is the same, the root causes are varied and complex. Research has shown convincingly that deficiencies in reading skills run in families (e.g., Wood & Grigorenko, 2001). This means that many, if not the majority, of individuals with serious difficulty in acquiring fluent reading skills (i.e., people with dyslexia) have genetic foundations to their vulnerability toward a deficit in reading and spelling skills. Around the world up to 15% of people suffer from this genetic reading difficulty (e.g., Shaywitz & Shaywitz, 2003). Furthermore, many individuals fail to learn to read as the result of environmental factors: no access to schools, inadequate instruction, and/or limited or no access to reading materials. These are specific problems facing developing countries. Yet no matter the root of reading difficulties, in most cases, targeted intervention, supported with learning technologies, can improve the level of reading skill over time. The foundation for understanding the learning process for reading has its roots in Finnish research that began in the early 1990s at the University of Jyväskylä (JYU), in collaboration between the university’s Department of Psychology and the Niilo Mäki Institute (NMI). 1 The initial research involved the study of children with familial risk for dyslexia. The JYU researchers followed 100 children with the familial risk from birth to puberty and compared their research findings against a similar number of children without such risk. The results of

Supporting Urgent Basic Reading Skills in Children in Africa and Around the World