Cell phones having huge impact in Africa (BBC)

[eppur_se_muova]

From Matatu to the Masai via mobile

By Paul Mason
BBC Newsnight business correspondent

"How big a change have cellphones made to Africa?" I shout the question at Isis Nyong'o, over the throbbing bassline of a Kenyan ragga track. She tells me calmly: "It's had about the same effect as a democratic change of leadership."

I'd expected hype from a Kenyan-American executive at MTV Networks Africa but by now I believed the hype myself. It was not the bling, the fashion models with candy-floss hair - it was the Nairobi teenagers mobbing the entrance to the city's Carnivore club and overwhelming the Motorola stall.
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With one in three adults carrying a cellphone in Kenya, mobile telephony is having an economic and social impact whose is hard to grasp if you are used to living in a country with good roads, democracy and the internet.
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{M-pesa} is simply an extra line on your mobile phone menu that says: "Send Money". You go to an office, transfer funds onto your phone account, and then send them to your friends, or family, or anybody else with a mobile. Then, they go to an office, show the code on the mobile and some ID, and collect the cash.

Even just working in Kenya it's going to revolutionise things - because plastic money and bank accounts are not greatly in evidence in this country as more than 50% of its people are classed as living in abject poverty.
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more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6241603.stm

Reminds me of an observation made by Arthur C. Clarke: developing countries do not need to follow the same path to mondernization as the developed countries -- they can see what works well now, and leapfrog over the long period of trial and error that it originally took to get there.

At first sight, it seems odd that countries which lack even good roads should rely on satellite uplinks and cell networks, but the latter can actually be installed more quickly, and with less disruption and environmental degradation.

[Lisa]

1. cool article!

[eppur_se_muova]

2. From Matatu to the Masai: Part Two

So what the Nairobi People's Settlement Network did was use mobiles and the internet to get organised against evictions. They used what we would call flashmobbing to call people from across the many different and rival settlements together where big evictions were planned, and threatened to sit down in front of the bulldozers.

It has not been completely effective, since the bulldozers simply wait a few days - but it is starting to change the dynamics of grassroots politics. In Kibera most ordinary people can't afford mobiles instead they use the community mobile service, Simu Ya Jamii, which has been partly developed by the GSM Association, the world industry body for mobiles.

Most of the activists do have mobiles and they use texting when they are out of talktime. And, says Marcy, it's breaking down the usual arrangement between movements like this and the political elite.
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Had it made a difference to Masai society? A massive one. To hear her full tale you'll have to tune into my Newsnight report but, basically, Masai husbands have discovered the secrets of the "incoming calls" list - and there's been tears before bedtime.

Making the journey along the mobile network was like travelling through a corridor of progress: and yes, it's facile to say mobiles are causing it all - but I don't think either economists or sociologists have yet begun to measure the massive impact they are having.
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more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6242305.stm