Ngozi is all smiles as she counts the gains made for the day. She is pleasantly surprised at the returns she has been making since her church charity group procured her a GSM mobile phone to start a small calling centre in her neighbourhood. Things are now looking up for her and from the savings made on business from the first phone she is able to buy two more phones and business is good.
Ngozi’s example and many more such examples are becoming common sight in the country, especially in the rural areas as many wake up to the reality and difference mobile technology can make in their lives. From Fantsuam village to the hinterland of Osun and Benue, the benefits of this technology to life is becoming more and more evident by the day and authorities in charge of the states of the federation are falling over themselves to build information communications technology parks and other technology initiatives to bridge the digital divides in their communities.
The rewards of the adoption of this technology can be seen in practically every area of life in the country today. It’s been more felt in the area of businesses where it played a revolutionary role in driving businesses to uncommon successes. Mobile technology has been adopted by many countries in Africa and is spreading its reach beyond African cities into unserved, remote and rural areas.
One of the initiatives introduced to make mobile technology better the lots of rural folks was a recently unveiled collaboration between Zain, Ericsson and the Earth Institute seeking to provide telecommunications deliverables to the Millennium Villages initiative powered by Ericsson in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. The initiative seeks to provide mobile communications and Internet connectivity to the Millennium Villages projects covering up to 400,000 people in 10 sub-Saharan African countries.
One of the goals of the partnership is to develop a comprehensive telecommunication strategy in the villages and to drive mobile phone connectivity across all the communities.
The Special Advisor to the United Nations Secretary-General and Director of Columbia University's Earth Institute, Jeffery Sachs in his comments on the partnership described mobile communication as perhaps the single most transformative technology for rural African villages to improve access to health care and education, create new business opportunities and access to markets, and ultimately to help eradicate extreme poverty. He added that the tremendous opportunities that mobile technology is bringing the way of many people across developing communities was inspiring. In these areas economic activities from farmers, artisans, to traders, health workers and teachers is looking up as more opportunities are enabled by the technology. Examples of this abound across the globe. In Bangladesh for example, the Grameen Foundation has redefined poverty eradication by empowering rural women to be self sufficient and provide for their families by giving them loans to acquire phone kiosks and phone which they use to do business. The Foundation is also working to totally eradicate poverty from the women through the rural village phone project and using its mobile network to connect hundreds of booths run by local women entrepreneurs in the rural communities to the internet. The villagers use the booths for different purposes like contacting relatives overseas, comparing market prices, or seeking for medical aid.
The Fantsuam Foundation in Nigeria is also doing same by empowering especially the women to work their way out of poverty through the platform of mobile technology, through the provision of microfinance to clan women's groups, promoting the use of the technology in support of traditional governance in rural development, education, rural-urban-rural and rural-rural connectivity, eCommerce, IT transfer for the manufacture of tropical solar-powered computers in our rural areas, accessibility etc.
In most places in Africa today, the potential of mobile technology to enable business is growing by the day. People no matter their trade are deploying mobile technology to enhance their trade. From fishermen, traders, artisans, mechanics, beauty parlors, teachers etc are all using the technology to enhance their businesses. In several countries in Africa like Mozambique, mobile technology is being used to tackle the poverty and enhance productivity in business and Ethiopia, where it’s being used to provide market information to rural communities to help small producers in the countryside find better prices for their products down to Zambia, where the adoption of mobile technology is helping farmers improve their production and their purchasing and marketing decisions etc. The deployment of the technology by countries to drive economic growth is enabling the outstanding growth rate of the technology with about five billion subscribers expected globally by 2015.
Telecoms experts agree that it’s the only technology that can adequately bridge the digital divide and enhance life. Bodies like the GSM Association and International Telecommunications Union are in the lead in driving the uptake of the technology amongst government and policy makers of these nations and regions to ensure that the continued demand for capacity and coverage in these regions is met for the nations to assuage their thirst for development. The ITU in this regard is this week holding a conference in Cairo, Egypt in the continued quest to drive technology into every cranny of Africa and beyond.
In Nigeria today, the gains recorded by the telecoms sector have touched every facet of the social and economic lives of the people. Mobile technology has opened up the country and brought in foreign direct investments running into $12 billion currently with more inflows expected before the end of the year. Aside that is the fact that it has brought in a veritable means of wealth creation for the people. The technology has created jobs both directly and indirectly, strengthened the small and medium scale enterprises in the nation.
The country has seen vast improvements in its productivity level because of this technology. Thousands of Nigerians have directly and indirectly benefited by way of employment and entrepreneurship with the creation of a new class of business men and women dealing in GSM enabled businesses dealing with sales of phones, accessories, call cards etc. Most businesses today cannot survive without mobile technology. It’s the bedrock of all the sectors of the economy today, be it oil and gas, the media, education, financial or otherwise. All the banks operating in the country today have dazzled their customers with an array of innovative products and e-payment solutions that leverage on mobile phone technology. The call today in the country is for all parts of the rural areas in the country to have access to this technology so that the people in those unserved and un reached areas can benefit from it. With Nigeria, overtaking South Africa as the largest and most vibrant telecoms market, all hands must be on deck to ensure that the rural areas are not left in isolation, but included in the mobile storm that is bringing good dividends to the people.
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