Africans’ insatiable appetite for cell phones has made the continent a profitable market for the high-tech gadgets, which were introduced only a decade ago. But in the intervening ten years, the sales figures have masked a larger social story: how the proliferation of cell phones is changing Africans’ relationships with one another.

“Cell phones are tied to social status and financial well-being, and so we’ve seen a reverse in attitude toward them as they have gotten more popular,” said Anthony Zwane, a sociologist with the University of Swaziland.

“When they were new, rich people flaunted them to show they were connected. But now every bus conductor and street vendor has a cell phone. They’ve become the people’s way of communicating. It’s still harder to get an old-fashioned landline phone. So, the rich want to show they are disconnected. Cell phones are now banned from country clubs and up-scale restaurants,” Zwane noted.

“People are great talkers. Cell phones allow average Africans to entertain each other through conversation, which is what Africans have always done. It’s a relatively inexpensive entertainment,” Ronnie Mkhombe, marketing manager of MTN-Swaziland, the country’s only cellular telephone provider, told IPS.

Zwane is amongst sociologists who have observed how the cell phone has brought the past into the future by reinforcing Africans’ oral traditions, communications managers and traders.

“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 a more terse type of communication in the West because people don’t like to ‘waste time’ on the phone,” said Connie Manuel, a business consultant in Maputo, Mozambique.

Manuel believes the impact of cell phones 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. Cell phone users rose from zero when the cellular phone provider MTN-Cameroon began its service, to 200,000 18 months later. Swaziland’s cell phone 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 cell phone impact: average revenue per user (ARPU). Nigeria has one-sixth of South Africa’s gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, but the average Nigerian cell phone 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 cell phone 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. In Nigeria, the average cell phone is used for 200 minutes per week, compared to 154 minutes per week in France, 149 minutes in Japan, 120 in Britain, and 88 in Germany.

The cell phone as a device for socialisation is illustrated by a phenomenon called SOMU, meaning “single-owner-multi-user.”

Penangnini Toure, a consultant in Mali with the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef), said, “People give the number of a friend’s cell phone to other friends, and they leave messages with him. The friend becomes a communications centre. There is only one cell phone, but many people use it. This has led to entrepreneurship. People will invest in a cell phone, and they charge other people to use it.”

“There’s no doubt the cell phone has contributed to economic development and social contact,” said Teresa Atogiyire, senior editor at the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation. “You have people selling phone calls by the unit, which are about 300 to 600 cedis.”

One U.S. dollar is equal to 8,700 cedis.

More intriguing is the way clever entrepreneurs have handled the Ghanaian hills that can cut off cell phones from transmission signals, rendering the instruments inoperative. The answer is “cell phone towers.”

“These guys 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 cell phone signal. A user pays 600 cedis to climb a ladder and make a call. It’s much easier than taking a bus to a place where there’s a signal.”

African nations differ, and Kagire Danson, publisher of Central African Media Agency in Kigali, related, “Rwandans are a very proud people. We don’t share. A cell phone is considered a status symbol.”

However, Danson admitted 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,” said Sam Ndwandwe, a communications specialist in Swaziland. “That is why Swaziland’s 300 chiefs want government to give the chiefs’ runners cell phones. The chief’s runner is traditionally the voice of the community, and he’s the chief’s conduit to the people. This is the 21st century. How can an African chief’s runner not have a cell phone?”