Upwardly mobile

In a recent Guardian article, it states that:

"In many parts of the world, mobile phones aren't a convenient alternative to landlines but the only means of communication: they provide connectivity where there was none before.

In Africa, to take the obvious example, mobile phones mean real change. By any development measure, Congo is a pretty poor place. Yet it is heading towards two million mobile users: one network has 850,000 subscribers. Subscriber growth in several sub-Saharan African nations was more than 150% last year, and there are eight mobile phones for every 100 people in Africa, up from three in 2001.

The vast growth in mobile phone usage has had an interesting knock-on to other kinds of transaction that we take for granted. Look at payments. If you live in rural Africa, your payment options are pretty limited and so, therefore, is your participation in the wider economy. If you don't live within a hundred miles of a bank, don't have a cheque book and have never even seen a credit card or a PC, then how do you send money (perhaps for goods you want from a market) to someone else?"

Read full Guardian article