Apple in Education, computer maker Apple’s educational arm, will launch a digital textbook store in South Africa in late January offering interactive textbooks for all of South Africa’s primary and secondary school subjects.

Core Group communications manager Taryn Hyam says the store is a Core Group initiative that is intended to ensure South African school pupils have access to local content.

The textbook store, called ZABooks, will be available as an application from the App Store. Hyam says it is separate to Apple’s iBooks and will offer 400 textbooks at its launch, with additional titles to follow later.

“The textbooks are uploaded as PDFs, but [their content] can be highlighted and students can add notes to them,” Hyam says. Users will also be able to make handwritten notes and annotations, and bookmark content. The content will be loaded onto the store by Core’s education team.

Hyam says the store has been developed in partnership with all of the key local education publishers and is aimed at both government and private schools.

Although the app will be free, pricing for the textbooks has yet to be finalized. Hyam says the digital textbooks are expected to be around 75% of the price of physical textbooks. “Publishers will set the pricing,” she adds.

There are more than 200 schools in South Africa that use iPads and Hyam says these schools have been made aware of the textbook initiative. She says it’s hoped their adoption will encourage other schools to embrace the platform, too.