COMMUNICATION: African Cellphone Culture Reinvents New Technology

By James Hall Reprint | | Print |

James Hall

JOHANNESBURG, Nov 11 2002 (IPS) - The explosive growth of cellphones in Africa has outpaced the acceptance of any other new technology. But a unique African cellphone culture has evolved which combines necessity with traditional community values.

‘’Most cellphone owners in West Africa, for example, tend to serve as points of presence or communication nodes for their community. Other people pay them or simply borrow their phones to make calls to relatives or friends,” says Francis Nyamnjoh, a sociologist with the University of Botswana.

Nyamnjoh cites a study commissioned by the investment banking arm of Merrill Lynch that found Africa is an ideal market for telephones, but demand had never been satisfied before cellphones because of the limitations of the older fixed-line phone system.

Internet is a slow-starter in Africa because of the expense of home computers and dependency on erratic electricity supply and connectivity to the land-line phone system. But cellphones are relatively inexpensive, and require no waiting period to acquire.

‘’Traditional African culture with its emphasis on palaver and oral story telling boosts phone use as a means of social and family contact. In contrast, you find terse type of communication in the West because people don’t like to ‘waste time’ on the phone,” says Connie Manuel, a business consultant in Maputo, Mozambique.

‘’Contrary to popular opinion, sociality, interdependence and conviviality are not always a liability to profitability,” says Nyamnjoh.

Nyamnjoh says the impact of cellphones on African culture can be measured by the proliferation of the devices and how they are used. In Cameroon, for instance, only 87,000 landline users exist, with their number limited by the expense of stringing wires to remote areas. Cellphone users rose from zero when MTN-Cameroon cellular phone provider began its service to 200,000 18 months later. Swaziland’s cellphone users surpassed landline user within two years of the introduction of mobile phones.

The more vociferous a people tend to be, the greater the second measurement of cellphone impact: average revenue per user (ARPU). Nigeria has one-sixth of South Africa’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, but the average Nigerian cellphone owner uses his or her instrument five times more than his or her South African counterpart. The United States has 1,000 times Nigeria’s GDP per capita, but revenue earned from an average Nigerian cellphone is twice that of an American user.

For a country with a low level of economic activity relative to the developed world, Nigeria has a high level of minutes of use, according to the Merrill Lynch report. On a monthly basis in Nigeria, the average cellphone is used for 200 minutes per week, compared to 154 in France, 149 in Japan, 120 in Britain, and 88 in Germany, says the report.

‘’This could be explained by Nigerians receiving more calls than they make, and also by the reality of single-owner-multi-user (SOMU) communities," says Nyamnjoh. ‘’This suggests that the economic and social value of a cellphone in countries like Nigeria and Cameroon are very high.”

Penangnini Toure, a consultant in Mali with the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), told IPS, ‘’People give the number of a friend’s cellphone to other friends, and they leave messages with him. The friend becomes a communications centre. This has led to entrepreneurship. People will invest in a cellphone, and they charge people to use it.”

The problem is Mali is not obtaining a cellphone, which can be purchased easily, but obtaining a cellphone number from the country’s single cellular service provider. Toure has waited a year thus far to be issued a number. But individuals who become mobile phone boxes with their Nokia or Siemens units can be found literally from Cape Town to Cairo.

‘’There’s no doubt the cellphone has contributed to economic development and social contact,” says Teresa Atogiyire, senior editor at the Uganda Broadcasting Corporation. ‘’You have people selling phone calls by the unit, which are about 300 to 600 shillings."

One U.S. dollar is about 1,800 shillings.

More intriguing is the way clever entrepreneurs have handled the Ugandan hills that can cut off cellphones from transmission signals, rendering the instruments inoperative. The answer is ‘’cellphone towers”.

‘’These guys, they build tall towers out of timber and stones on top of hills, and put a platform on top. Up there, you can pick up a cellphone signal. A user pays 600 shillings to climb a ladder and make a call. It’s much easier than taking a bus to a place which has a signal,” she says.

African nations differ, and Kagire Danson, publisher of Central African Media Agency in Kigali, says. – Rwandans are a very proud people. We don’t share. A cellphone is considered a status symbol."

However, Danson admits he usually takes messages for family members and friends not yet connected to the cellular system.

‘’A person who is a communications centre becomes important,” says Sam Ndwandwe, a communications specialist in Swaziland. ‘’That is why Swaziland’ s 300 chiefs want government to give the chiefs’ runners cellphones, because the chief’s runner is traditionally the voice of the community and the chief ‘s conduit to the people. How can chief’s runner not have a cellphone?"

COMMUNICATION: African Cellphone Culture Reinvents New Technology

By James Hall Reprint | | Print |

James Hall

JOHANNESBURG, Nov 11 2002 (IPS) - The explosive growth of cellphones in Africa has outpaced the acceptance of any other new technology. But a unique African cellphone culture has evolved which combines necessity with traditional community values.
(more…)