Essay about the using of mobile technologies in Africa

1. AFRICA’S MOBILE
PHONES
TECHNOLOGIES

2. Mobile phones technologies have proven to be a notable success in the transformation of the
African continent. They have grown as the main source of communications and with improving
technologies, it is evident that they will be the core catalysts to the development of the African
continent. This will aid in Africa competing on a global economic platform and close the gaps
left by the dark colonial past. This essay aims discuss ways in which the mobile phones have
transformed Africa and the future that the mobile revolution holds for the African continent.
Many people in the African continent have proved to be owning a mobile phone. (Pew Research
Center, 2015) Reported that in 2002, 8% of the Ghana populations owned a cellphone and the
figure accelerated to 83% by 2015. Furthermore (Pew Research Center, 2015) figures show
that mobile phones ownership in most African countries are common as they are in the United
States, with about 90 % of adults owning mobile phones. This figures show that in a period of
just 13 years, almost the entire population of Ghana owned a cellphone. This population ranged
from business people, ordinary citizens to the youth who are still in schools.
The most common trend of Africa’s mobile revolution to this date are smartphones. According
to (Pew Research Center, 2015) about (34%) of South Africans and (27%) of Nigerians prefer
to own a smartphones. Smartphones have the capacity to perform tasks which were previously
designed for computers. It can be said that they were designed to replace the computers. They
are able to connect to the internet and applications that have been a common innovations that
has been invented by entrepreneurs and the governments.
Many people in Africa cannot get access to traditional banking of going to the branches, as
they are out of reach (Dobush, 2015). This resulted to most people not being able to perform
simple transactions, however, mobile phones have made it convenient for consumers to
perform banking and payment operations (Agence France-Presse, 2015). There are services
which are offered by the banks and mobile operators such as; eWallet and M-pesa. Most
Africans use these mobile services to pay their bills, and make payments to individuals
(Ogunlesi, 2012). This has dropped the number of people who have to go to the banks to do
those transactions manually.
According to (Grant, 2015), Africans have gained global recognition and there is a lot of them
who work beyond the African region. They usually send money back home in the form of
remittances. Mobile phones are the main form of technology that they send them with. Mobile
banking is the main thing they use in the transferring of these remittances. According to
(Dobush, 2015) M-Pesa lets users transfer money via text message, and similar systems by

3. other telcos such as eWallet from FNB have followed suit in Sub-Saharan Africa. This is what
most Africans use to transfer the money.
Mobile phones have now helped in making people in every part of the country to be heard.
When you look into most African nations, most places are remote and often the government
do not offer service delivery to those people. This mobile revolution has made it simple to
transform ordinary citizens disenchanted by their governments, into resistance fighters
(Ogunlesi, 2012). Taking into consideration, the most recent and ongoing strike of the Fees
Must Fall strike in South Africa where students have been protesting against the expensive
university fees. Mobile phones were used by most into reporting the violent protests moments
after they had occurred. Across the continent, according to (Ogunlesi, 2012), mobile phones
brought about unprecedented levels of openness and transparency to the electoral process and
governing of the African nations. There are some African countries, for instance, Libya set up
a first-of-its-kind mobile voter registration system in 2014 as reported by (Dobush, 2015).
Mobile phones and tablets have made education to be so simple. Most classes today in the
schools are driven by the use of these gadgets. There are a lot of user friendly applications
which are found on platforms like the google play store. Recently in one the modules at the
University of Johannesburg, the lesson was being carried out and then the activity was done on
an online tool called Socrative. This tool is accessible with a mobile phone and all the students
were able to participate. Taking into consideration that social media can also help in mediating
education, this will help in reducing many children who cannot go to school and in the future
conduct lessons from home through the mobile phones. According to (Dobush, 2015), there is
a program in Pakistan that provide teachers with online videos on how to tackle some concepts
in mediation and they are downloadable anywhere using the mobile phones whenever is
convenient for them.
Mobile phones have made it convenient for people to have contact with health institutions.
(Grant, 2015) Stated that Africa is perceived to be rural, and this simply decrees that most
African communities are remote and far from health institutions and in case of emergencies,
people were not able to get medical attention quickly. Mobile phones have now made it simple
to get in contact with these instutions by simply having the emergency services contacts at our
convenience. For instance, according to (Grameen Foundation, 2016), they have provided
information about health issues to mothers during their pregnancy and these information can
be accessed through mobile phones. For some, there are insurance companies like ‘All Life’ in

4. South Africa, that send text-messages to the patients reminding them of their doctor’s
appointment (Ogunlesi, 2012). Fundamentally, mobile phones have played an important role
making sure that people are able to access health services in most African countries.
Agriculture is the most common practice on the African continent. However the most common
setback that most farmers have is accessing information about, weather services, market prices
and other fundamentals that make farming possible. Mobile phones have today made it possible
for the farmers to gain access to these information. Farmers are now able to use their
smartphones to gain access to weather reports and market prices at their convenience.
(Ogunlesi, 2012) Reported that most farmers are now able to send a text message to inquire
about the crop prices.
Furthermore, it is believed that Kenya's Agricultural Commodities Exchange have partnered
with the well-known mobile operator Safaricom to launch ‘SokoniSMS64’ which helps in
providing farmers with pricing information (Ogunlesi, 2012). In Niger it was found that the
innovation of mobile phones helped to lower the prices of grain by 10% (Aker, 2010). Mobile
phones have proven to be a huge success in helping farmers, because to this date they are able
to access information about precautions and try to find alternative ways that ensure that their
business is not affected.
Mobile phones have also played a role in growing the entertainment industry. Mobile phones
today are so advanced that people can now stream into their favourite TV and radio shows
online, and also accessing the social media platforms. According to (Ogunlesi, 2012), mobile
phones in Nigeria are mainly used for activities such as accessing social media and
downloading of songs and videos from the internet. It is possible to access platforms such as
Youtube to watch videos on the mobile phones. Furthermore, it is possible stream on the
internet to probe onto what events will be taking place and also accessing the websites to book
tickets without even going to the ticket outlets. With this innovation, most people have now
access to entertainment in their pockets.
Africa has proven to be a country of civil unrest and it has seen many people to seek refugee
in the neighbouring countries. Specifically, South Africa has proved to be a getaway for most.
According to (Refunite, 2016), there is about 60 million people which are reported to be
displaced in the entire world, and in Africa wars are the common cause of this factor. In this
instance, mobile phones have been used in refugee camps to connect these people with their
families. These Non-government Organizations, have helped capturing the information of these

5. refugees so that their families can be able to get track of them. Furthermore, the most
excruciating xenophobic attacks in South Africa led to the launch of SMS emergency reporting
and relief systems as reported by (Ogunlesi, 2012).
Nonetheless, there has been a huge setback with this innovations. Firstly, mobile phones that
are capable of performing these functions are usually expensive. If not everyone cannot afford
them, then their purposes can be ‘useless’. Secondly is the high cost of data and airtime. This
mobile phones require data and airtime to perform tasks, just as humans need food and energy
to function. The question which rises is whether a human can live healthily without adequate
nutrition. The same thing applies to mobile phones. Data is expensive and recently in South
Africa there was a movement of #DataMustFall. (van Zyl, 2016) Reported that a research
company called Tariffic stated that “Data prices for South Africa were on average 134% more
expensive than the cheapest prices in the group”, when compared to the countries within the
BRICS. Basically this means that not everyone can afford to use mobile phones.
Third and lastly is the access to the mobile network coverage. According to (Williams, et al.,
2011) telecommunications services can only be accessed by the most privileged. Furthermore
it reported that, “mobile network coverage rose from 16 percent to 90 percent of the urban
population; by 2009, rural coverage stood at just under 50 percent of the population” (Williams,
et al., 2011). This shows the dynamics that most African countries still face in trying to develop
the issue of everyone having access to the mobile phones. These differences gradually exclude
those in the rural areas and deny them access to information and communications technologies
(ICT).
There has been so much research that stipulates how mobile phones played a role in
revolutionizing the African countries. Mobile phones have proven to be the tools that promote
activism, education, agriculture, health, entertainment and disaster management, thus
developing the African countries. However, the issue that still rises is that, most people
especially in remote rural areas still do not have access to them, and expensive data means that
some are excluded. Therefore, there must be a gazing for the future needs by the government
and service providers into ways they can make mobile phones accessible and provide network
coverage in remote areas. Judging from most African nations that have access, there is adequate
proof that mobile phones technologies have indeed played a role in promoting development.

6. References
Agence France-Presse, (2015). Gadgets360. [Online] Available at:
http://gadgets.ndtv.com/mobiles/features/africa-leading-the-way-in-adoption-of-mobile-
banking-686451 [Accessed October 28 2016].
Aker, J. C., (2010). 'Information from markets near and far: Mobile phonesand agricultural
markets in Niger'. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2(3), pp. 46-59.
Dobush, G., (2015). [Online] Available at:
https://www.cta.tech/News/Blog/Articles/2015/July/How-Mobile-Phones-Are-Changing-
the-Developing-Worl.aspx [Accessed 28 October 2016].
Grameen Foundation, (2016). Grameen Foundation. [Online] Available at:
http://www.grameenfoundation.org/what-we-do/health/promoting-healthy-behavior
[Accessed 31 October 2016].
Grant, R., (2015). Africa : geographies of change. New York: Oxford University Press.
Ogunlesi, T., (2012). CNN. [Online] Available at:
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Pew Research Center, (2015). Pew Research Center. [Online] Available at:
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[Accessed 28 October 2016].
Refunite, (2016). Refunite. [Online] Available at: https://refunite.org/about/immigrant/
[Accessed October 31 2016].
van Zyl, G., (2016). Fin24. [Online] Available at:
http://www.fin24.com/Tech/Multimedia/data-prices-how-sa-compares-to-the-rest-of-the-
world-20160930 [Accessed 31 October 2016].
Williams, D. J., Mayer, R. & Minges, M., (2011). Africa's ICT Infrastructure. Washington,DC:
The World Bank.