Cell Phone Use Changes Life in Africa

[highplainsdem]

What a great story!

http://www.dailypress.com/technology/ats-ap_technology14oct16,0,3031019.story?coll=sns-technology-headlines

Cell Phone Use Changes Life in Africa
By RODRIQUE NGOWI
Associated Press Writer
October 16, 2005, 3:26 PM EDT


NAIROBI, Kenya -- Amina Harun, a 45-year-old farmer, used to traipse around for hours looking for a working pay phone on which to call the markets and find the best prices for her fruit. Then cell phones changed her life.

"We can easily link up with customers, brokers and the market," she says, sitting between two piles of watermelons at Wakulima Market in Kenya's capital.

Harun is one of a rapidly swelling army of wired-up Africans -- an estimated 100 million of the continent's 906 million people. Another is Omar Abdulla Saidi, phoning in from his sailboat on the Zanzibar coast looking for the port that will give him the biggest profit on his freshly caught red snapper, tuna and shellfish.

Then there are South Africans and Kenyans slinging cell phones round the necks of elephants to track them through bush and jungle. And there's Beatrice Enyonam, a cosmetics vendor in Togo, keeping in touch with her husband by cell phone when he's traveling in the West African interior.

<snip>

[Cha]

1. I know cell phones do come

in handy, although, I am one of the few who hasn't needed one yet.

[Maraya1969]

2. What does the elephant ring them up and tell them where he's at?

My phone wouldn't keep a charge that long. Maybe they are using Walkie Talkies instead.

[dalloway]

3. anyone remember the 80's classic "The Gods Must be Crazy."

This is what this reminds me of.

[Extend a Hand]

4. its articles like this

that really make DU such a valuable news resource to me. I get to see so many interesting stories that I would miss otherwise. Thanks for posting.

I'm really glad that some technology is actually improving life for regular people Africa.

[connecticut yankee]

5. How do they recharge them?

I know mine goes dead after about three calls, and I have an extended-use battery.

[arcos]

7. They have electricity in Africa, you know?

Sure, lots of places are still lacking, but Africa is not all like you see on the news and documentaries.

[applegrove]

6. I read about this a while back and thought - Bingo! This is amazing.

The good thing is that cell phone business are local and the money can stay in African instead of going to corporations in the West - well at least part of it.

[Ellen Forradalom]

8. It's great to see people using cell phones

for a purpose other than making total assholes out of themselves in public.

[400Years]

9. I believe cell phones helped stop the coup in Venenzuela recently

[pitohui]

10. heh don't get too excited

when you break down in rural kenya, the cell phone works as about as well to get someone as it did in the rural areas of the usa 5 or 10 yrs ago, it don't!

fortunately there seem to be young men who go abt the countryside at least after the rains looking for broken-down vehicles that they can help out

i'd be there yet if i waited for our cell phone :-)

[XemaSab]

11. My thought exactly...

hell, I can't get cell reception at MY HOUSE!

In California!