Mobile Phones: The new technology transforming Africa

For all the talk about "making poverty history" through aid and debt relief, perhaps the best tool for poverty alleviation in Africa is the mobile phone. Yes, that incredible handheld device appears to have done wonders for the poor globally. 

Given its extensive poverty, Africa has been the fastest-growing mobile market in the world in the last five years. According to mobile technology experts, the first cellular call in Africa was made in Zaire, now DR Congo, in 1987.  Now there are more than 52 million mobile users in Africa compared to about 25 million landlines. In 19 African countries, mobiles account for at least three quarters of all telephones.

Traditionally, mobile operators have targeted urban areas, but it is the demand from rural and low income areas that have exceeded all expectations. A report by Gamos, a group of influential professionals, for the Commission for Africa, proposes three key areas where support from high level institutions could help African countries exploit the potential that mobile technology offers to the vulnerable.

They include expanding access to networks  from which the poor can benefit., stimulating services relevant to the poor and providing low cost and low tarriffs for effective universal access.

Gamos says many of the existing commercial services like horoscopes and football results have little relevance to the poor. Therefore, there is a need to stimulate the development of locally designed, mobile based solutions to African opportunities by supporting local technology entrepreneurs.

One recent piece of research revealed how phone sharing, and the facility for phone charging, has been an engine of this small-business revolution.

Particularly in rural areas, a small investment in a phone can first create a business opportunity, then maximise its reach by overcoming the possible limitations of real or technological illiteracy – because the phone operator can make sure the call gets through, and can cut off the call at exactly the right moment to avoid wasting any part of a unit.

For fishermen deciding which market is best for their catch, or what the market wants them to fish for, a phone call makes the difference between a good return on the right catch or having to throw away the profit, and the fish, from a wrong catch. Smallholders trying to decide when or where to sell, can find a single phone call an equally profitable experience.

In Kenya, a mobile money system set up by technology firm Safaricom, has 7 million customers and processes as much as 10% of the country’s GDP.

And in neighbouring Uganda, almost one in four has their own handset. The country has pioneered cash transfers by phone through the innovative Me2U airtime sharing service, which allows a client to pay in cash where they are and transmit it by phone to family or a business associate hundreds of miles away. They receive a unique code that they can take to a local payment outlet to turn into cash.

Whether it's checking market prices of crops, transferring money or simply making a call, mobile phones are transforming Africa. However, it remains to be seen whether this new technology would end up bypassing the poorest.

Franklin Adesegha

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