There is something about Worldreader, a project putting ereaders into classrooms outside Accra, Ghana, that bothers me. Every time I see a Worldreader tweet, I get a little sick feeling inside.

At first, I thought it was because they are distributing Amazon Kindles, as if I’d been swept up by the usual outcry about Amazon and its walled garden. Poor children in Ghana locked in like Bezos zombies! But actually, the Kindle’s simply the best ereader around. It’s fast, Whispernet works like a charm, and its price just keeps getting better. There is no better choice.

Is my uneasiness caused by the peppy American non-profitness of it all? Do I just have a built-in dread-radar for cultural colonialism in resource-poor Africa? I thought so for a long time. But recently, rereading Paul Kagame’s wonderful piece in the Huffington Post from last year, I remembered that I’m actually a big fan of good people helping anywhere on our continent. It’s wealth redistribution in its finest form, and, anyway, we can teach visitors as much as they teach us. It’s a good trade.

So I’m beginning to realise that my uneasiness about the Worldreader project has much more to do with shame. We shouldn’t need a non-profit from the first world to show our children the wonders of ereading and low-cost digital distribution. We should be constantly, eagerly seeking out these kinds of opportunities ourselves. Every chance to accelerate education and the flow of information – especially to children! – is so important to us that casting aside old ways of doing things should be natural, and urgent too. We should be ahead of the curve, not waiting for others to drag us up it.

Worldreader’s work is critically important. If others in Africa have felt my uneasiness, I hope we turn our embarrassment into energy and action. It’s time to plug in our libraries, our bookstores and our schools.