Wednesday, January 17, 2007
“How big a change have cellphones made to Africa?” I shout the question at Isis Nyong’o, over the throbbing bassline of a Kenyan ragga track. She tells me calmly: “It’s had about the same effect as a democratic change of leadership.”
I’d expected hype from a Kenyan-American executive at MTV Networks Africa but by now I believed the hype myself. It was not the bling, the fashion models with candy-floss hair – it was the Nairobi teenagers mobbing the entrance to the city’s Carnivore club and overwhelming the Motorola stall.
If this was just an event for the elite then neither MTV nor Motorola would be there. Kenyans have been voting via SMS for their favourite rap stars, and the whole event has been promoted via mobiles.
With one in three adults carrying a cellphone in Kenya, mobile telephony is having an economic and social impact whose is hard to grasp if you are used to living in a country with good roads, democracy and the internet.
In five years the number of mobiles in Kenya has grown from one million to 6.5 million – while the number of landlines remains at about 300,000, mostly in government offices.
Newsnight correspondent Paul Mason travels through Kenya using a map of the country’s mobile phone networks as his guide.
Kenya mobiles
“How big a change have cellphones made to Africa?” I shout the question at Isis Nyong’o, over the throbbing bassline of a Kenyan ragga track. She tells me calmly: “It’s had about the same effect as a democratic change of leadership.”
I’d expected hype from a Kenyan-American executive at MTV Networks Africa but by now I believed the hype myself. It was not the bling, the fashion models with candy-floss hair – it was the Nairobi teenagers mobbing the entrance to the city’s Carnivore club and overwhelming the Motorola stall.
If this was just an event for the elite then neither MTV nor Motorola would be there. Kenyans have been voting via SMS for their favourite rap stars, and the whole event has been promoted via mobiles.
With one in three adults carrying a cellphone in Kenya, mobile telephony is having an economic and social impact whose is hard to grasp if you are used to living in a country with good roads, democracy and the internet.
In five years the number of mobiles in Kenya has grown from one million to 6.5 million – while the number of landlines remains at about 300,000, mostly in government offices.
Continue reading “From Matatu to the Masai via mobile”
Source: BBC (link opens in a new window)
