Paperight partners with copier-printer developer Riso to empower schools

In partnership with Riso, Cape Town-based startup Paperight moves closer to achieving its goal of providing schools and teachers easy, low-cost access to textbooks. Paperight enables teachers and learners to take action themselves by giving each teacher an official account. In turn, teachers can download and print books as needed from their closest copy shop. Now with the help of the copier-printers developer Riso, this process would be made even more efficient.

Through this partnership, Riso will contribute towards the publishers’ licence fees on behalf of schools that use their machines. Schools that enter into a contract with Riso Africa will receive a pre-paid Paperight account. Paperight already offers over 1 700 different books, including titles from Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press.

Printing learning materials through Paperight is completely legal. “Publishers really want to solve the problem of access to books in South Africa,” explains Arthur Attwell, founder of Paperight. “So they allow our network of schools and copy shops to print out books in return for a small licence fee.”

Riso develops unique environmentally-friendly copier-printers that also aims to deliver incredible performance at a fraction of the cost, time and energy consumption involved with conventional printing technologies. “Riso machines require very little power, making them among the greenest in the world. They’ll even run off a UPS, making them perfect for schools where electricity is unreliable,” says Attwell.

“Riso and Paperight is sparking nothing less than a revolution”, says Sonia Anderson, Marketing & Environmental Manager for Riso Africa. “Our ComColor machines let schools print out textbooks for less than their retail price, bound and in full colour. A 600-page textbook prints and binds in 6 minutes.”

Funded by the Mark Shuttleworth Foundation, Paperight won the Digital Minds Innovation Award at London Book Fair earlier this year. This is after it was named one of the winners of the O’Reilly Tools of Change Startup Showcase in New York City. Furthermore, founder Arthur Atwell has been congratulated by the South African parliament.