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Giz 10 innovations_mobile_africa
1. Africa’s mobile revolution
How the cell phone is transforming the continent
Published by
Deutsche Gesellschaft für
Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH
Friedrich-Ebert-Allee 40
53113 Bonn
Germany
T + 49 228 4460 - 0
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2. The mobile phone has evolved from a communications tool to a device, on
which much of Africa’s economic aspirations rest. Innovations built around
the mobile phone have improved the population’s inclusion in financial
markets and have helped to work around the continent’s infrastructure
problems. In some regions, more Africans have a mobile phone than have
access to electricity. This has opened up opportunities for entrepreneurs
and has changed the way business is done in the continent’s banking, ag-
ricultural, telecoms and pharmaceutical sectors. But it has also helped to
increase transparency in politics as activists use mobile applications to
monitor political violence and fight against state control of free speech.
i
Africa’s mobile revolution
How the cell phone is transforming the continent
Published by
Deutsche Gesellschaft für
Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH
Friedrich-Ebert-Allee 40
53113 Bonn
Germany
T + 49 228 4460 - 0
F + 49 228 4460 - 17 66
E info@giz.de
I www.giz.de
Responsible
Dr. Jan Schwaab
Sabine Olthof
Edited by
Christian Kreutz
Contact person / Ministry
Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development
Design / Layout
Creative Direction: Daniel Tobias Etzel (WAOH)
Art Direction: Nora Wirth (3Karat), Katja Rudisch (3Karat)
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
Printed on 100 % recycled and FSC certified paper
Place of publication and year
Bonn, 2014
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7. In 2009, a local story called “Kontax” that follows
two characters, Sbu and K8, through everyday
teenage life launched in 2009 on MXit. The story
was created and split into bite sized chapters shared
on the social network to test and see whether teen-
agers so full of “txt speak” could indulge in local
storytelling and Shakespearian poetry or prose as
well. In a month there were over 63,000 readers
and 17,200 reads of Kontax. This gave birth to
Yoza Cellpone Stories, which were created by
the Shuttleworth Foundation and which recently
picked up the 2013 Netexplo Award in Paris.
Yoza publishes short stories, poetry and classic
literature allowing the audience to comment,
vote, enter writing competitions and review sto-
ries on the platform.
It has since developed into a library of over 31
million novels, 18 poems and 5 Shakespearean
plays. A comment by the reader Elsie, enchan-
ted by a chapter in Romeo and Juliet, shows
that teenagers in Africa do read: “If friar’s plan
works then romeo wil b abl 2 cum nd take juliet
wit him 2liv hapily 2geda at mantua bt if it fails,
sumbdy’s gna b dead. Lol!” This is just one of
the over 50,000 comments, largely comprised of
text speak yet regarding one of the finest English
writers of all times.
But African educational institutions are mostly in
poor shape, which the mobile phone alone can
not change, also because these institutions don’t
make sufficient room for technology.
»The spirit of entrepreneurial
change can be felt across many
of the continent’s hub cities.«
Two South African companies are attempting to
improve the situation, Siyavula and Paperight.
Siyavula is producing free, open-licensed text-
books and distribute them in a highly disruptive
way. Both firms make their textbooks available
in print, as PDFs, as web pages on desktop or
mobile, and importantly on MXit. Within two
months of the launch of their high-school
math and science textbook on Mxit in 2012 they
reached over 200,000 readers.
Siyavula’s business model is highly innovative
and has challenged the local printing industry.
The firm does not sell content, but rather the
support and training services that surround a full
implementation of multimedia learning materi-
als. It also sells intelligent assessment of lear-
ners through an interactive question-and-answer
platform that adjusts difficulty levels based on
students’ performance. As was the case with the
Kenyan banking industry, the spread of smart-
phones and in this case social media leaves a
traditional industry with no choice but to adapt.
Paperight is a South African start-up that tries
to take advantage of the presence of cyber cafes
and print shops on every corner of African cities
by turning them into legal book printers. Content
piracy is widespread across the continent, be it
in multimedia or photocopying of copyrighted
content. Paperight seeks to build a network of
cyber cafes and small print shops, allowing them
to download licenses of books to be printed out
while publishers rights are kept intact. So far 145
active outlets have come on board, some in re-
mote parts of the country. The consumer does
no longer have to travel to the nearest bookstore
and the publisher, Paperight and the cyber cafe or
print shop each get revenue.
Africa’s mobile boom has had some real impact
on different economic sectors. The recent strong
economic growth that some parts of the conti-
nent has seen is no longer exclusively linked to
higher commodity prices. Small local businesses,
larger regional corporations as well as non-profit
organisations are building products and mobile
applications that are based on the wide-spread use
of the mobile phone. This will hardly tackle all
of the continent’s infrastructure problems. The
economic development is held back by the lack
of fixed-line, high-speed broadband networks.
These are still a pillar of service economies built
around the Internet, despite the spread of the
mobile phone. But the mobile phone has helped
to improve the financial and economic partici-
pation of many Africans that were previously
excluded from any opportunities. The spirit of
entrepreneurial change can be felt across many
of the continent’s hub cities such as Nairobi,
Lagos and Cape Town. The growth of Africa’s
middle classes opens up opportunities to busi-
nesses as well.
Activists are also relying on the mobile phone
to monitor politics and to improve awareness
amongst the population through more accurate
information, in particular during times of po-
litical and ethnic violence. The mobile phone
has enabled powerful crowdsourcing tools such
as Ushahidi to emerge. It has also helped initi-
atives such as Map Kibera, which has put the
small Kenyan town on the map for the first time
through digital citizen mapping.
In former times, the continent’s maps were
drawn by outside explorers. The spread of Inter-
net access through mobile phones today allows
Africans to draw their own maps and populate
them with their own content even without Inter-
net access. With its impact on industries ranging
from telecoms to agriculture, the mobile phone
helps to put the continent’s development back
into Africans’ own hands.
Conclusion: drawing your
own maps again
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8. Mark Kaigwa is a consultant, technologist and blogger
based in Nairobi, Kenya. Technology continues to
transform Africa as innovation is accelerated in particular
by the breathtaking spread of the mobile phone. Mark
leads by advising brands, businesses and nonprofits
aiming at impacting the hundreds of millions across
the continent. Mark has worked across ten Sub-Saharan
African countries and has written an award-winning
African video game for Warner Bros. In his most recent
work, he led the digital advisory for “MamaYe”, a five-
year campaign that aims to use information, advocacy
and evidence to improve maternal and newborn survival
in six Sub-Saharan African countries.
Mark is also involved in leadership roles at Afrinnovator.
com and Africandigitalart.com.
A storyteller and speaker, Mark frequently gives keynotes,
workshops and participates in regional and international
discussions on technology, communication and the
mobile phone on the African continent.
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Repository
01 For further information see http://english.cntv.cn/program/africalive/20120728/101095.shtml and http://www.iceaddis.com/
02 Interview with Jessica Colaco, iHub, Nairobi, December 2012
03 Moraa Morara, Hilda: “What makes technology hubs successful and are they a platform for innovation?”, VC4A, October 11, 2012.
http://vc4africa.biz/blog/2012/10/11/technology-hubs-innovation/
04 Okutoyi , Elly: „Stop copying Silicon Valley, Kenya warned“ , The Next Web, 23. February 2013. http://thenextweb.com/
africa/2013/02/23/stop-copying-silicon-valley-kenya-warned/
Mark Kaigwa
about the autor
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