mobile dawn

July 25, 2011 at 12:01 pm Leave a comment

From banking to education to healthcare, the ongoing economic revolution in Africa, is being boosted in no small measure, by rocketing adoption of mobile phones, and increasingly the mobile Web.

The Guardian reports on a pattern that seems to be ever more evident and replicating, across emerging markets.

A new day beckons, a day of empowerment.

In Africa, where a billion people use only 4% of the world’s electricity, many cannot afford to charge a computer, let alone buy one. This has led phone users and developers to be more resourceful, and African mobiles are being used to do things that the developed world is only now beginning to pick up on.

The most dramatic example of this is mobile banking. Four years ago, in neighbouring Kenya, the mobile network Safaricom introduced a service called M-Pesa which allows users to store money on their mobiles. If you want to pay a utilities bill or send money to a friend, you simply dispatch the amount by text and the recipient converts it into cash at their local M-Pesa office.

According to California-based mobile-banking innovator Carol Realini, executive chairman of Obopay: “Africa is the Silicon Valley of banking. The future of banking is being defined here… It’s going to change the world.”