Africa's Mobile Access Rates Are Big News for Mobile Applications
United Nations Agency Reports Huge Growth in African Mobile Subscriptions
An article published last week highlights some remarkable statistics about mobile access in Africa: where only 2% of Africans were using mobile phones in 2000, 28% have cell phones today. This exponential growth in cell phone adoption is significant for anyone working on international development initiatives.
With massive mobile adoption happening in Africa even while traditional internet access lags, many practical possibilities for using mobile devices to access information and support international development projects currently exist. Will White gave a presentation at DrupalCon last week talking about options for using SMS for online data collection, and his example focused on using SMS for election monitoring. A couple months back, we wrote about some proof of concept ideas for aggregating RSS over low-bandwidth GPRS modems that would have great application for keeping people in rural areas up to date about agriculture, public health, and other issues.
Organizations like Text To Change and Ushahidi, and communities like MobileActive.org, are coming up with other great ideas for using mobiles for international development on a daily basis. Still, there are a ton of opportunities out there for building new mobile applications for international development that aren’t being pursued. As mobile adoption rates continue to skyrocket in developing countries, we’re excited to see more energy and creativity invested into mobile applications.
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