Mobile phones: the new talking drums of everyday Africa, edited by Mirjam de Bruijn, Francis Nyamnjoh and Inge Brinkman, Bamenda, Langaa Research and Publishing Common Initiative Group (RPCIG) and Leiden, African Studies Centre, 2009, 184 pp., £19.95 (paperback), ISBN 9956558532
In the year 2000 about one in 50 Africans had access to a mobile phone. By 2008 the figure was one in three. When ROAPE dedicated a whole issue to information and communication technologies (ICTs) in Africa in 2004 (Issue 99) this technical revolution was just getting underway, and at that stage people were more concerned with the ‘digital divide’, and Africa's disadvantages within global developments. The extent and nature of ICT use in Africa over this decade has jumped by leaps and bounds, with research into its impact on societies and economies scrabbling to keep up with rapidly changing and diverse circumstances.
A plethora of researchers has started following these developments, and their discussions appear in such fora as ICT for Development (ICT4D) and Mobiles for Development (www.dgroups.org/groups/mDevelopment) with numerous conferences and exhibitions. As one of the authors in this compendium says (p. 137), however, ‘to date, very few studies have systematically considered the key factors of mobile ICT use in developing countries using data collected from individual consumers.’ Less research has been undertaken on economic actors who use these technologies, and who operate outside of projects sponsored by the aid industry. As Jeffrey James has observed elsewhere, the literature is still voluminous, yet fragmented (James 2005).
This compendium of research articles (one in French and the rest in English), brought together by the African Studies Centre in Leiden and Langaa Research and Publishing Common Initiative Group (RPCIG) in Cameroon, results from a workshop in 2006. These articles focus, often within an historical context, on anthropological, socio-economic, and cultural aspects of the uses made of mobile phones in African communities in recent years. The ways in which such phones are used vary from society to society, users adapting these technologies to their needs and cultures in a variety of ways. It points the way to ICTs needing to be more structured to the needs and perspectives of their users.
The subjects of the articles range from the impact of mobile phone use on the nature of anthropological research, to mobile phone callbox development in a small town in Cameroon, to societal impacts of mobile phone use in a large city (Khartoum). One article reveals the limited use of mobile phones amongst tomato and potato traders in Tanzania because of the social importance of face-to-face contacts in trading relations, and over-reaction to price signals resulting in flooded markets, but also reveals the growth of ‘network reception spots’ (where mobile phone-equipped agents link suppliers and traders by phone). Another article looks at how poorer households access mobile phones and the use of text messaging amongst poor, often semi-literate people in Burkina Faso, while another one looks at the use of the mobile phone for diagnoses, payments, medicine deliveries, and check-ups by a traditional medical practitioner in Cameroon. The last two articles look at the embodied persona of an individual type of phone as it changes with its users in Tanzania, and Internet café use patterns and user objectives in Accra, Ghana, and their impact on travel and migratory objectives of Ghanaians.
Although these articles bring out the many positive effects on social development, economic opportunity and personal security afforded by mobile phones, they do not eschew the sometimes negative aspects of crime organisation, abrupt social tension created from swift change, uncertainty of location of user, trust difficulties, fantasy creation, or phone use ‘addiction’, and consumerist ‘status’ over productive use that may also result from the development and use of this technology.
This compendium provides a rather disparate, if sometimes interesting, collection of studies of ICT users. Much more still needs to be researched on the changing trends in ICT usage and their impacts in both social and economic areas, focusing on particular use needs, and how these are changing over time. Different approaches are needed for different groups, according to their differing needs and their different ITC access possibilities. A number of ICT projects have failed, because they cast their net too widely (no pun intended!), not focusing sufficiently on user needs.
A group of us are focusing in this way on the interface between ICTs and the functioning of agricultural marketing systems. A number of projects – e.g. Manobi in Senegal and South Africa; MISTOWA (Market Information Systems and Traders' Organizations in West Africa) in West Africa; IICD (International Institute for Communication and Development) in Uganda (Commodity Exchange Project); MAPRONET (Market Access Promotion Networks) in Ghana; CROMABU (Crops Marketing Bureau) in Tanzania; KACE (Kenya Agricultural Commodity Exchange) and Drumnet in Kenya – have established ICT-based initiatives in relation to this sub-sector in recent years. In a number of these the beneficiaries and users have often been men, but increasingly (particularly in gender-conscious institutions), women are using such technologies.
Limited research has been undertaken to date, however, on how different operators in agricultural marketing systems have used existing and available ICT technologies to improve particular marketing functions. In some cases, previously radio-based price information systems have been replaced by computer-based systems, and they in turn are being by-passed by individual-user mobile phone-based systems. The change is rapid and use practices diverse. Sometimes resistance is found, as in Magu District in Tanzania, where the Sukuma ethnic group considered that information was seen as a collective good, and that it should not be disseminated on an individual level: societal norms in conflict with individualistic assumptions of neo-classical economics!