Mobile Africa: A Story of Tech Revolution
Mobile Africa is a film project documenting the extraordinary rise of mobile technology across Africa and its impact on the continent’s new generation of tech entrepreneurs.
The incredible success of mobile technology in Africa came as a shock to many. In the early-1990s, Africa appeared to be an unlikely destination for mobile phone subscriptions. The continent was viewed as high risk, with questionable rewards. In 2000, around 1% of homes across Sub-Saharan Africa were connected by landlines. 15 years later, mobile subscriptions in Africa have increased more than 67 fold, compared to a 3-fold increase in the United States. According to the GSMA, there are now 420 million unique mobile subscribers in Sub-Saharan Africa.
How did Africa leapfrog almost a hundred of years of telephony development and infrastructure? And what does this technology mean for everyday Africans?
Our film, Mobile Africa: A Story of Tech Revolution, documents the rise of mobile technology in Africa, from South Africa’s first cellular broadcasting license in 1994, and Kenya’s pioneering money transfer system M-Pesa, to more recent innovations that extend internet access to remote populations. We speak with Africa’s new generation of mobile tech entrepreneurs and look at the impact they are having on society, as well as the challenges they still face. The film profiles entrepreneurs in health, finance, insurance, education, agriculture, and entertainment. Their innovations have provided people with up-to-date healthcare information and appointment reminders, solar lighting in rural areas, livestock and agriculture advice, access to digital books, and insurance coverage for the most vulnerable citizens. These innovators have filled in the gaps left by slow and inefficient bureaucracies and are working hard to shape the future of Africa.
Mobile technology has had a profound impact on all segments of African society, but people living at the bottom of the pyramid have the most to gain from access to information. Our film highlights everyday people whose jobs are made possible by the mobile economy and small business owners whose livelihoods have been transformed through mobile connectivity. It includes perspectives from academics who place the societal impact of mobile phones into context, and government regulators who discuss their plans for encouraging future innovations within their respective countries.
Yet every light casts a shadow. For all the success of mobile technology, drawbacks and unintended consequences exist. Increased connectivity creates the potential for abuse, especially among governments with authoritarian tendencies. Fake news shared online isn’t just a problem facing the West, but has the potential to strain already fraught elections across the continent and spread dubious health information. There is also concern that mobile technology is increasing inequality between the connected and those who lack access to information. Professor Manuel Castells, Wallis Annenberg Chair of Communication Technology and Society at USC, has described the yawning gap between technology haves and have nots as the rise of the “4th World”. In this idea of the “4th World,” those with greater access to technology, and thus information, separate themselves from those who don’t have access to that same information. In the context of Africa this can be seen as increasing inequality, even amongst those in poverty.
Despite these issues, the story of mobile technology in Africa is an overwhelmingly positive tale. Mobile phones are lifting millions out of poverty, increasing access to information on a vast scale, and supercharging the efficiency of businesses both large and small. African innovators are not only tackling local challenges, but working on solutions with the potential for global impact. Challenges remain, but the future is brighter than ever before.
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