The Aga Khan University Graduate School of Media and Communications' Media Innovation Center (MiC) has partnered with Mozilla Corporation to launch Pocket in East Africa. Pocket, a mobile application built on the Android and iOS platforms, allows users to access written and visual content of their liking and even save it for offline browsing later. The popular read-it-later bookmarking service has client apps on the iPhone, iPad, and even the Mac including both a browser extension and a dedicated reader app.
“We have partnered with Mozilla to identify and work with a team of curators who have put together fascinating and exceptional content from East Africa. The partnership will also ensure that local content is curated and distributed to better optimize the product and meet the needs of Kenyan online users," said Dr Njoki Chege, Director at MiC.
“For the first time, we have a series of collections from outstanding Kenyan curators who bring fresh perspectives from Kenya and East Africa, targeting mostly under 34 who are voracious readers and consume a lot of content from the internet."
Matt Koidin, Pocket Vice President and General Manager Mozilla, said their mission is to ensure that the internet becomes a global public resource, open and accessible to all.
“We believe in an internet that puts people first, where individuals can shape their own experience, are empowered, safe, and independent. Through Pocket, we are empowering people to discover, organize, consume, and share content that matters to them. The ability for users to save articles to “read it later" will be transformative. We believe that together with our Kenyan partners we will keep making the app better for Kenyans," he said.
Downloadable from Google Play Story and Apple Store, saved Pocket articles are stripped of ads and formatting which limits memory storage needs and users can also control how much memory they allow the application to use. Additionally, downloads are only possible over Wi-Fi to meet the needs of cost-conscious users who often have limited bandwidth.