NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Tuesday, July 26, 2005

Call centres have sprung up all over Tanzania. Most people do not actually own phones, so this is how many people communicate.

It is a good business, and once again these phones are connected via GSM rather than landlines.

Others have developed even simpler businesses based around mobiles, such as reselling their air time to others, or make a living sending and receiving text messages.

Mobile phones seem to have created a new sector of the economy, and some now wonder if the emphasis on the internet when looking at the digital divide was wrong-headed.

Len Waverman, an economics professor at London Business School, says: “Even in the more developed parts of Africa, where we thought the phone would just be a toy of the urban rich, it’s not.

“It really is a tool for business development, and it’s moving across population segments that we really did not before believe would be accessible by these companies.”
Story found here.