Published in Spring in Economía Exterior (No. 36), this 7-page paper explores trends in mobile telephone use on the African continent. According to author Vanessa Gray, "[t]he story of African telecommunications is undoubtedly mobile."

Drawing on International Telecommunication Union (ITU) databases, Gray shares a variety of figures and patterns to illustrate and explain the success of mobile telephony in Africa. For example:

• The number of mobile subscribers passed the number of fixed lines in Africa in 2001, and the total number of mobile subscribers at the end of 2004 stood at 76 million. This represents a tripling in the total (fixed and mobile) telephone penetration - from 3.5% in 1999 to 11.5% in 2004.
• By 2004, almost 75% of all African telephone subscribers used mobile; the figure was even higher in Sub-Sahara, where more than 4 out of 5 telephone subscribers use a mobile. In Nigeria, for example, mobile telephony has helped to increase total telephone penetration from 0.5% to 8% between 1999 and 2004. Gray calls this "the highest ratio of mobile to total telephone subscribers of any region in the world."
• In 2004 alone, almost 15 million people in Africa joined the mobile cellular subscriber base - a figure equivalent to the total number of (fixed and mobile) telephone subscribers on the continent in 1996.
• According to Gray, Africa's mobile market has also been the fastest growing of any region over the last 5 years. The mobile penetration of 9.1 per 100 inhabitants was nearly 3 times the fixed rate.

The author indicates that this growth in mobile telephony "has been critical for enhancing access to telecommunications in a region where fixed lines remain very limited." While on average there are only 3 fixed lines for 100 Africans, she says, the rate is even lower in Sub-Sahara Africa, where it stands at 1.6 to 100.

The success of mobile telephony on this content can be explained, Gray thinks, by several factors, including: the ability of mobile operators to provide mobile coverage more rapidly; the fact that mobile networks are often easier to deploy, operate, and manage than conventional fixed lines; a high degree of liberalisation and competition in the mobile sector that has brought down prices and motivated operators to be more service-oriented; and coverage (whereas fixed telephones are often limited to major African cities, it was estimated that - by the end of 2004 - more than 60% of the population in Africa would be within range of a mobile signal.

However, despite these advances and high growth rates (even in Sub-Sahara Africa), Gray stresses that the continent's overall mobile penetration is the lowest of any region. It stood at 9.1% in 2004, compared to the global figure of 27%, and - in Sub-Saharan Africa - an average of only 7.3% of the population had a mobile phone in that year. In some Sub-Saharan countries, including Ethiopia, fewer than 1 out of 100 people had a mobile phone in 2004.

Gray suggests that there is a persisting need to provide access to those who have been excluded - mainly, rural dwellers and lower-income citizens. Research detailed here suggests that low-income households are prepared to spend relatively large amounts of their revenue on telecommunications because it helps them save money in other areas. In response to such findings, a number of governments, including South Africa, Kenya, and Uganda, have obliged mobile operators to provide a certain population coverage as part of their license conditions and/or require them to install community service telephones. Also, leading mobile handset manufacturers have been working to further reduce the price of mobile handsets and to craft "Ultra-Low-Cost Handsets". Prepaid mobile has also lowered the threshold of telephone ownership, the author claims. These advances, she surmises, will further drive growth rates in Africa's mobile telephony.

The article also includes examples of concrete impacts that spikes in the use of the mobile phone have made. For instance, farmers in Uganda have used this information and communication technology (ICT) to find out about the latest crop prices. According to Gray, "Instant and direct access to market prices increases their revenues, provides them with valuable information to negotiate and protects them from being cheated by middlemen. The service reaches millions of farmers every week." Another example derives from South Africa, where the Compliance Service uses short message service (SMS) to remind tuberculosis (TB) patients to take their medication. Gray claims that this strategy "has substantially decreased the number of treatment failures" - presumably, saving lives. In short, as illustrated by the data that Gray shares here, mobile phones are increasingly impacting Africans in positive ways by providing a point of contact, fostering participation in the economic system, and improving relationships with friends and family.