Introduction

Though it came into the continent many years ago like an

unexpected visitor, cell phone has become an inseparable
companion of most Africans. It has not just become a new daily
fixture in the lives of inhabitants of the world’s second most
populous continent, mobile phone is fast replacing its old cousin,
analog telephony. Since its arrival in the late 1990s, mobile
telephony has continued to redraw Africa’s social architecture,
with more than 90 per cent of telephones in the continent being
mobile phones1. Like their counterparts in other climes, a large
chunk of Africa’s estimated one billion people have embraced this
social revolution, using this sweetheart consumer technology to
break barriers that hitherto existed in all sphere of their lives.2
Because this leveler provides the much-needed template for
staying in touch with their loved ones, transacting businesses more
easily, and reaping many other gains from cheap telephony, mobile

1
See Africa - making money at the bottom of the market, available at
http://www.reportlinker.com/ci02083/Mobile-
Telephony.html/coverage/World:Africa/mode/premium (accessed on November 12,
2010)
2
With 49 per cent annual growth rate between 2002-2007, as opposed to Europe’s
17 per cent, Africa’s mobile telephony is poised to achieve enormous expansion
potential predicted for it. Identifying informational challenges as the bane of the
growth of commerce in developing countries, Abi Jagun, Richard Heeks and Jason
Whalley concluded that mobile technology possessed the magic wand to solving the
problems militating against the growth of micro enterprises in evolving economies.
See “The Impact of Mobile Telephony on Developing Country Micro-Enterprises: A
Nigerian Case Study” in the Journal of Information Technologies and International
Development. Volume 4, Number 4, Fall/Winter 2008.
phone means more than a new communication device to many
ecstatic Africans.

Indeed, cheap
telephony has
become a tool of
empowerment,
one that is fast
opening up a
floodgate of
opportunities in
knowledge
dissemination
Map of and harnessing
Africa
huge economic and technological potential existing in sub-Saharan
Africa.3 This mood was captured very succinctly in a landmark
study of the impact of mobile telephony on the social, economic
and political landscape of the continent:4

3
Read further in Information, Communication, and Power: Mobile Phones as a Tool for
Empowering Women in Sub-Saharan Africa;
http://www.simoncolumbus.com/2010/10/25/information-communication-and-power-
mobile-phones-as-a-tool-for-empowering-women-in-sub-saharan-africa/ (accessed on
October 30, 2010)
4
For a cartographical analysis and description of how this technology has altered the
cultural, social, economic and political space in Africa, see Mirjam de Bruijin, Francis
B. Nyamnjoh and Inge Brinkman (2009: 11-22)
 One in fifty Africans had access to a mobile phone in 2000 and by
2008 the figure was one in three. This is a revolution in terms of
voice communication, especially for areas where land lines were
still rare at the end of the 20th century. …this new technology is
(re)shaping social realities in African societies and how Africans
and their societies are, in turn, shaping the technologies of
communication.

Given its
pervasiveness in
Africa, mobile
communication
is speculated to
be the region’s
second most-
used information
and
communication technology in the 21st century – besides radio.5 By
the end of 2009, there were 454.8 million mobile phone
subscribers in Africa.6 Yet, the horizon appears very bright and

5
See Gender Assessment of ICT Access and Usage in Africa, volume 1 2010 Policy
Paper 5; sourced from Research ICT
Africa:http://www.researchictafrica.net/new/images/uploads/Gender_Paper_May_2010
.pdf (accessed on November 2, 2010)
6
Although the global credit crunch reared its ugly head in the African telecom sector
in 2009, the region recorded consistent impressive growth record, having 22 per cent
growth fact sheet in 2009, 35 per cent in 2008 and 42 per cent in 2007. Read further
in http://www.ametw.com/west_africa_telecoms_industry (accessed on
November 3, 2010)
promising for the sector in this developing world. Going by the
latest statistics of the International Telecommunication Union,
ITU, as global mobile phone connection is expected to jump from
5.3 billion in 2010 to 7.1 billion in 2014, the emerging markets of
Africa and Asia will contribute the lion’s share of this projected
boom.7 Out of a total 53 countries in Africa, West Africa’s 16
nations, which constituted the main study area of the current
research, accounted for 30 per cent of the continent’s entire mobile
technology subscriber base by the close of 2009. The remaining
three sub-regions, 37 countries in all, provided 70 per cent. (See
the diagram below).

Source: Industry data & estimates c. 2010 Blycroft Ltd

7
See http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/newslog/ (accessed on November 2, 2010)
 Telephone Subscription in West Africa

Country Number of Analog Phones Number of Mobile Phones

Benin 127, 100 5.033million(2009)

Burkina Faso 167, 000 3.299million(2009)

Cape Verde 72, 200 392, 000(2009)

Cote d’Ivoire 282, 100 13.346million(2009)

Ghana 267, 400 15.109million(2009)

Guinea-Bissau 4, 800 560, 300(2009)

Guinea Republic 22, 000 5.607million(2009)

The Gambia 49, 000 1.433million(2009)

Liberia 2, 000 842, 000(2009)

Mali 81, 000 3.742million(2009)

 Mauritania 74, 500 2.182million(2009)

Niger 24, 000 1.677million(2008)

Nigeria 1.308million 62.988million(2008)

Senegal 237, 800 5.389million(2008)

Sierra Leone 31, 500 1.009million(2008)

Togo 140, 900 1.547million(2008)

Source: Central intelligence Agency’s World

In Nigeria, for example, the positive impact of mobile

communication is so phenomenal that the gains posted within first
four years of mobile telephony surpassed what the
telecommunication industry achieved in the nation’s first three
decades after independence8. Going by current statistics, Nigeria
has emerged Africa’s largest mobile market, accounting for 16 per
cent of the continent’s mobile subscriptions and 53 per cent of
West African mobile phone users. With 78.5 million people now
using cell phones out of Nigeria’s 150 million population, the
access to information has been able to give democracy an impetus,
transform the lives of individuals as well as many hitherto
inaccessible communities in Nigeria, having opened vistas of
opportunities and closed the wide inequality gap in a country
where only the few affluent used to be the only owners of
telephone lines.9 Prior to the advent of cell phones in the 1990s, the
8
Read Esharenana Adomi further in Mobile Telephony in Nigeria. Library Hi Tech
News, Number 4, 2005 (page. 18-20).
9
Further readings in Christiana Charles-Iyoha (ed.) 2006. Mobile Telephony:
Leveraging Strengths and Opportunities for Socio-Economic Transformation of
Nigeria. Lagos: Centre for Policy and Development or Nigel Scott, Simon Batchelor,
state-owned but moribund (privatized a few weeks ago) Nigerian
Telecommunications Limited, NITEL, was only able to provide
roughly 450, 000 analog telephone lines in a country that was then
peopled by over 100 million.10 Today, millions of Nigerian mobile
phone users still remember with nostalgia the infamous statement
of one minister of communications who, in response to deafening
public outcry against prohibitive costs of owning and maintaining
a land line during the era of military dictatorship, remarked that
telephones were actually not meant for the poor.11

Overall mobile Rural population Rural population Rural population

cellular coverage covered (%) covered (millions) not covered
(%)
(millions)

Africa 69 52 253 230

America 93 73 136 50

Arab States 94 86 115 18

Asia and the Pacific 85 76 1 720 533

CIS 94 83 83 17

Jonathan Ridley and Britt Jorgensen. The Impact of Mobile Phones in Africa; see
http://gamos.org.uk/couksite/projects.docs/mobile%20in%20africa.full%20report.pdf
(accessed on October 29, 2010)
10
See A History of Nigeria by Toyin Falola and Mathew M. Heaton.
11
David Mark, currently Nigeria’s president of the Senate who was then minister of
communications during the military administration of Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida,
shrugged off mounting criticisms against lack of public’s access to telephony, saying
telephone was actually not for poor Nigerians. See
http://thenationonlineng.net/web2/articles/14312/1/David-Marks-graceless-
reply-/Page1.html or http://www.compassnewspaper.com/NG/index.php?
option=com_content&view=article&id=68192:decades-of-mixed-blessings-
&catid=37:info-tech&Itemid=709 (both accessed on November 12, 2010)
 Europe 99 98 159 3

World 86 74 2 466

Note: The rural population by a mobile cellular signal is calculated by the following
formula:

Proportion of rural population covered by a mobile cellular signal=

Proportion of total population covered by a mobile cellular x total population – Urban population

Rural population

Source: ITU

Like Nigeria, Ghana is equally having a swell time. Since the

first cellular phone service was initiated in Ghana in 1992, the
quality of life has been in an upward swing. In a country where the
ratio of mobile to analog phone is touted to be 40: 1, mobile phone
user base has increased from 383, 000 in 2002 to approximately
15.4million by the end of 2009, posting a penetration rate of
almost 63 per cent12. And with the launch of one more telecom
operator in the year, Ghana seems set to enjoy further boom in
mobile telephone market in years to come.

With the end of an internecine war in Cote d’Ivoire in 2003,

the return of favorable investment climate has rubbed off on
mobile phone market as well, making it the third largest mobile
telephony market in West Africa. A French-speaking West African

12
For more statistics and analyses of Ghana’s potential in telephony, see
http://www.reportlinker.com/p0184925/Ghana-Telecommunications-Report-Q2.pdf
(accessed on November 28, 2010)
country with an estimated 20 million people, Cote d’Ivoire or
Ivory Coast (as it is called in English) accounted for 10 per cent of
the sub-region’s mobile phone strength. Even Senegal, with a
population of 12.5million, accounted for 5 per cent of mobile
phone subscriptions in West Africa, just as Benin, Burkina Faso,
Guinea Republic and Mali contributed 3 per cent each. While each
of Sierra Leone, Niger and Mauritania posted 2 per cent of mobile
telephony in the sub-region, Liberia, Togo, The Gambia and
Guinea Bissau contributed an average of 1 per cent each. (See
diagram 2 below, which depicts in percentages the contribution of
each of West African countries to the total mobile phone
subscriptions in sub-region).
Source: Industry data & estimates c. 2010 Blycroft Ltd