Seven Ways Mobile Phones Have Changed Lives In Africa

A little over a decade ago there were around 100,000 phone lines in Nigeria, mostly landlines run by the state-owned telecoms behemoth, NITEL. Today NITEL is dead, and Nigeria has close to 100 million mobile phone lines, making it Africa's largest telecoms market.
Across the rest of the continent the trends are similar: between 2000 and 2010, Kenyan mobile phone firm Safaricom saw its subscriber base increase in excess of 500-fold. In 2010 alone the number of mobile phone users in Rwanda grew by 50 per cent., figures from the country's regulatory agency show.
During the early years of mobile in Africa, the Short Messaging Service (SMS) was at the heart of the revolution. Today the next frontier for mobile use in Africa is the internet.
"Mobile is fast becoming the PC of Africa," says Osibo Imhoitsike, market coordinator for Sub-Saharan Africa at Norwegian firm Opera, whose mobile browser is enjoying an impressive uptake on the continent. "In fact there isn't really anything more personal than a mobile phone nowadays."
Last October, for the first time ever, the number of Nigerians accessing the internet via their mobiles surpassed the number of desktop internet users., figures from Statcounter show.
The trend has continued since then. Most of those devices will be low-end Nokia phones, tens of millions of which have already been sold on the continent. The more expensive "smartphones" are however also increasing in popularity, as prices drop. Blackberry's market share has been rising in the developing world, bucking the trend in Europe and North America.
Google, for its part, plans to sell 200 million of its Android phones in Africa and it is estimated that by 2016 there will be a billion mobile phones on the continent.
In 2007, President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, said: "In 10 short years, what was once an object of luxury and privilege, the mobile phone, has become a basic necessity in Africa."
Below are seven ways that mobile phones have transformed the continent:
BANKING
M-PESA is a mobile money transfer service launched by Safaricom, Kenya's largest mobile operator and Vodafone, in 2007.Five years later M-PESA provides services to 15 million Kenyans, (more than a third of the population) and serves as conduit for a fifth of the country's GDP.
In Kenya, Sudan and Gabon half or more of adults used mobile money, according to a survey by the Gates Foundation and the World Bank. How have mobile phones changed Africa?
The runaway success of M-PESA in Kenya is inspiring similar initiatives across the continent, from South Africa to Nigeria to Tunisia, as governments struggle to extend banking services to larger numbers of the population -- across sub-Saharan Africa only one in five adults own bank accounts.
Many Africans now use mobile money to pay their bills and airtime, buy goods and make payments to individuals, remittances from relatives living abroad are also largely done via mobile banking.
ACTIVISM
One lesson from the 2011 uprisings across North Africa was that mobile phones, with the infinite opportunities they offer for connection and communication, are able to transform ordinary citizens disenchanted by their governments, into resistance fighters.
Realizing this, the beleaguered Mubarak regime successfully put pressure on Egypt's mobile phone networks to pull the plugs, in a bid to slow down the tempo of opposition activity. And so the 28th of January 2011, mobile phone networks in Egypt went dead.
In the aftermath of the bloody elections in Kenya in 2008, citizens were able to report violent occurrences via text messages to a server (via the Ushaidi platform) that was viewable by the rest of the world as it happened.
Across the continent mobile phones are also bringing unprecedented levels of openness and transparency to the electoral process, empowering citizens from Cairo to Khartoum to Dakar to Lagos.
EDUCATION
Nokia capitalized on the growing popularity of social networking in South Africa to launch MoMath, a mathematics teaching tool that targets users of the instant messaging platform Mxit. Mxit is South Africa's most popular social media platform, with more than 10 million active users in the country, according to company figures.
The platform has the potential for transforming the continent's dysfunctional educational system is immense, as mobile phones -- cheaper to own and easier to run than PCs -- gain ground as tools for delivering teaching content.
It is hoped that mediating education through social networking will help reduce the significant numbers of school-age African children who are not currently receiving formal education of any kind.
ENTERTAINMENT
A 2009 survey found that "entertainment and information" were the most popular activities for which mobile phones are used in Nigeria, in particular for dialing into favorite radio shows, voting in reality shows, downloading and sharing songs and photos and videos, and tweeting.
However companies are creating mobile only platforms targeted for this market. Africa now teems with online platforms like Kulahappy (a popular online Kenyan "entertainment channel" developed for the mobile screen) and AfriNolly, which sells itself as "African movies in your pocket."
Nigeria's mobile music industry (covering everything from mobile downloads to ringtone and caller-tune subscriptions) is now a multimillion dollar industry.
Interestingly, Lithuanian mobile dating site, Eskimi, recently became the second most visited site in Nigeria, after Facebook, and is in the top ten bracket in several other African countries. Half of the site's seven million plus active users are Nigerian.
DISASTER MANAGEMENT
Mobiles have been finding innovative uses in refugee camps, allowing displaced persons to reconnect with family and loved ones.
An NGO in Uganda has teamed up with mobile phone companies to create a database for refugees to register their personal details.
The information available on the database allows them to search for people they've lost contact with.
South Africa's 2008 xenophobic attacks inspired the launch of SMS emergency reporting and relief systems.
AGRICULTURE
Mobile phones have made a huge difference in the lives of farmers in a continent where the agriculture sector sis one of the largest employers. Most of these people will be "smallholder farmers," without access to financing or technology.
By serving as platforms for sharing weather information, market prices, and micro-insurance schemes, mobile phones are allowing Africa's farmers to make better decisions, translating into higher earning potentials. Farmers are able to send a text message to find out crop prices in places thousands of kilometers away.
As far back as 2003, Kenya's Agricultural Commodities Exchange partnered with mobile operator Safaricom to launch SokoniSMS64, a text messaging platform to provide pricing information to farmers.
M-Farm also offers a similar service, while the iCow is a mobile app billed as "the world's first mobile phone cow calendar." It's an SMS and voice service that allows dairy farmers to track their cows gestation, acting in effect as a veterinary midwife. Farmers are also given tips on breeding and nutrition

HEALTH
A simple text-messaging solution was all 28-year-old Ghanaian doctoral student, Bright Simons needed for his innovative plan to tackle counterfeit medicine in African countries. The World Health Organization estimates that nearly 30% of drugs supplied in developing countries are fake. In 2009, nearly 100 Nigerian babies died after they were given teething medicine that contained a solvent usually found in antifreeze.
Simons' pioneering idea was to put unique codes within scratch cards on medicine packaging that buyers can send via SMS to a designated number to find out if the drug is genuine or not.
The system is now being used by several countries in Africa and rolled out to places such as Asia where there are similar problems with counterfeit drugs.
In South Africa there's Impilo, a service that allows people to find healthcare providers anywhere in the country 24 hours a day, using their mobile phones.
Mobile phones are going to play an increasingly important role in mediating the provision of better healthcare to the citizens of African countries. Phone companies are realizing that mobiles are highly effective -- and potentially lucrative -- for the dissemination of health and lifestyle tips, and reminders for doctors' appointments.
In June 2011 a consortium known as the mHealth Alliance organised a Mobile Health Summit -- touted as Africa's first -- in Cape Town. The Alliance describes itself as a "[champion of] the use of mobile technologies to improve health throughout the world."

BlackBerry Prostitution Reigns In Nigeria; To Cause Brain Tumour, Insomnia

BlackBerry Prostitution Reigns In Nigeria; To Cause Brain Tumour, Insomnia 

 As more Nigerians rely on the Blackberry phones for business and social networking, the level of addiction to the device is becoming more worrisome to people's health. It's addiction could be worse than drug addiction, SPECTRUM gathered.

BB phone is not only becoming an indispensable tool for high flying Nigerians, the increasing demand for BB and current fad as a status symbol could result in widespread health hazards for Nigerians.

According to a report by Kunle Azzez, ICT Correspondent, Gbenga Arowora’s life revolves round his blackberry phone. He clutches it firmly all day and never for one moment lets it slip away from his firm grip until midnight when he places it carefully by his pillow as he finally goes to bed. The blackberry is his most dependable partner, a partner he must consult for all his businesses and a partner which also serves as a veritable link with his contacts around the world. Like most high-flying Nigerians, Arowora is addicted to the blackberry.

A recent survey revealed there are over 200,000 Nigerians already hooked on the blackberry now regarded as the most effective and efficient communication tool for business executives and also for staying connected to friends, relatives and associates on personal levels. Blackberry was originally manufactured for accessing emails while on the move but has since become a reliable integrated wireless communications platform. As it catches on fast among Nigerians, Blackberry is becoming so addictive that owners may need to be weaned off them with treatment similar to that given to drug users.

In what seems like a confirmation of a recent study by the New Jersey’s Rutgers University School, Blackberry is fuelling a rise in email and internet addiction, with sufferers able to survive only a few minutes without checking for new mail. Indeed, Arowora confessed that he is mostly unaware of people and events around him whenever he’s using the gadget. Now he even wakes up at night to chat with friends as his BB beeps all night.

Arowora is not alone. Mutiu Adeyemi, a banker told said he and his colleagues now rely on the BB to perform their daily tasks. He said his bank encouraged employees to buy the phone through a special in-house scheme “in order for us to be more efficient as we are able to work as if we are in the office for it helps to attend to assignments more quickly and easily.” This, of course, means they have to continue working even at home at odd hours.

Investigation reveals that the demand for BB is on the increase throughout Nigeria. This trend was confirmed by the Business Development Manager, Slots Systems Limited, one of the biggest phone retail outlets in the country, Mr. Patrick Egbulefu. According to him, more Nigerians now throng the company’s outlets daily requesting for BB, a situation he described as not surprising because of the enticing features of the phone.

Now, the BB has become a status symbol gadget in Nigeria as it has been turned into an index for measuring class status. Investigation reveals it is also being linked to criminal activities in the country. For instance, apart from its widespread use among business executives, political office holders and a number of celebrities in the country, some young Nigerian ladies have become so addicted to the use of the device that a minute parting with the gadget seems like dismembering them.

Their addiction to the device and desire to go extra miles to own a Blackberry phone was captured in a Nollywood film titled: Blackberry Babes by Simony Pictures. The movie, which runs part 1 and part 2, is a hilarious exposition of the Nigerian reality and growing BB addiction.

It is the story of a group of university friends, all female, whose social and private lives are centred on the supposedly fascinating world of BB phones. Unable to fund their addiction, the girls rely on rich men to buy them the latest models. But phones, money and other treats come at a price: In return, the girls offer these men sex and/or companionship and the whole thing turns into a rather pathetic competition – the aim being to get the latest Blackberry model before everyone else and “flaunt” it wherever they go. The use of Blackberry phones as a tool for prostitution and other licentious activities is another negative development that has become a reality in Nigeria today.

A Lagos-based female National Youth Service Corps member, who pleaded anonymity recalled how some of her friends fraternised with the so-called big men just to acquire Blackberry phones. “After acquiring the BB, they venture into some funny games by posting their Blackberry PIN numbers to social networking sites for prospective customers and as expected, they receive calls from clients and soon begin to chat endlessly until the men are hooked. My friends have since been dating the rich men who carry them from one hotel to another and also contract them to their male friends in exchange for money which they (the Blackberry girls) use to settle their monthly internet access fees.

"At times, they would take x-rated pictures of themselves and circulate to prospective clients through their BB. They are making a lot of money now. I have since kept away from them because I cannot cope with their current ‘status’. I don’t have a Blackberry and I can’t imagine myself indulging in such a dirty game,” the female Corps member stressed.

Picture of the Day: The New N700 Note.

One year old boy shot by armed robbers needs your help

One year old boy shot by armed robbers needs your help

One year old Taiwo Lawal (pictured above) was one of those shot by armed robbers during the GTBank robbery that took place on Sunday September 9th in Gbagada, Lagos. Taiwo, a twin, was hit in the head by a stray bullet as the robbers exchanged gun fire with police. He was playing in his father's compound when he was hit.

Taiwo is receiving treatment at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) and needs N500, 000 for treatment. If there's anyone out there who would like to help him, below is the account to make your donations.

His Aunt's Account details: Lawal Mariam Oyenike. GTBank. Acct no: 2087293311590. You can call Taiwo's dad - 08028416683 or his aunt - 08121118895. God bless you all.

 

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