Africa has shrunk now that one person in three owns a mobile phone. Already the effect on families, business and even governance has been extraordinary, but the telecommunications revolution has only just begun.
Over the single piece of cloth that George Kamakei Olodopash, an illiterate Masai farmer in Narok, Kenya, wore wrapped around his torso and thighs, hung a mobile phone from a thin black belt. Through an interpreter I asked him what he used it for. He looked at me as though I was from a previous century.
“If I’m out in the fields and I’m going to be late home, I can phone my wife and tell her,” he spelt out. How did he charge it? “I have a solar panel on the roof of my hut,” he replied.
That was in 2003. Since then the number of Africans buying mobile phones has shot up by 550 per cent, according to the United Nations. The “Information Economy Report” published by the UN Conference on Trade and Development in October, found that mobile subscriptions rose from 54 million to 350 million between 2003 and 2008 ”“ meaning more than a third of Africans now owns a mobile phone.
Hey, that’s pretty good.. The only carbon dioxide pullution he is creating is when he breathes… We can’t say that……
Grandmother
I’ve seen this telecommunications revolution in West Africa first hand. It has been incredible to watch. Some of my friends have 3 cell phones – one for each of the three mobile phone service providers here in our country. (That fact of quite a few having more than one mobile probably does skewer the “1 in 3 Africans now has a phone” statistic a bit… but the overall point still holds.)
I’m so glad that some of my friends who may have only had once or twice a year contact with distant relatives now can be in regular contact with their extended families. The greater sense of “connectedness” to the world here where I work is very palpable, especially in the past 5 years… it is having a profound influence on the traditional society here. Some of that openness to the world is very positive (we see a much greater openness to the Gospel), but yes, we see the downside too as terrorism has increased as ability to communicate and coordinate actions across very isolated desert terrain has increased. I pray the good of such connectedness will greatly overcome the dangers, and that the Lord would give His people holy creativity to use this amazing technology and new tools well.
By the way, the term here for making a “flash call” as the article calls it, is the English word “beep” which has become part of three different local languages. If you don’t have much credit on your phone (one only pays for outgoing calls), you beep someone – hang up after the phone only rings once, and hope they have enough credit to call you back.
What was really funny, though, was while I was in the States for a month in October, I had several of my African friends trying to “beep” me in the States. Problem was, my phone only displayed “outside caller” and I had no way of knowing who called. I got back to some very disgruntled friends in November: “Why didn’t you call me back from America?!” …. Sigh. Gonna have to figure out a solution for that next time I’m in the States…
Karen B,
Thanks for your observations.
You could ask your friends to text you to let you know that they will be calling?
Do you see any need for broadband (ie high speed internet connections) for things such as schools, hospitals or anything else?
John A., many of my friends aren’t literate, so don’t text. But, it’s a good idea!
Theoretically we have broadband internet here, but the demand has exploded so much in the past 2-3 years that my connection via ADSL is usually AWFUL, sometimes well below what you’d get from a 56K dial up modem.
That’s a big part of the reason I’m hardly on the blogs any more… some days it takes me an hour to download a dozen emails.