mobile africa

Phone revolution makes Africa upwardly mobile

Posted by KatrinVerclas on Mar 15, 2006

Ken Banks's blog, photo of girl with mobile phoneGreat article in the UK Times about the mobile market in Africa and the enormous growth there. 

"This remarkable growth — the African market is expanding nearly twice as fast as Asia’s — has confounded analysts and even service operators. As recently as 2003, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) forecast that there would be only 67 million users by the end of 2005.

“Many of us underestimated the strength of the informal sector in Africa,” said Michael Joseph, chief executive officer of Safaricom, Kenya’s biggest operator, with four million customers. “And the huge need and desire for people to communicate.”