Silicon Savanna: Mobile Phones Transform Africa

This Time magazine article opens with a description of developers and projects at the Pivot25, June 2011, a conference for mobile-phone software developers and investors in Nairobi, Kenya. It notes news of the fast adoption rate of mobile technology, particularly in Africa.

The article focuses on new mobile apps [applications for mobile telephones], such as a money app - called M-Shop, and on ways that Africans are using the technology to satisfy needs, such as text-message networks to send email, run social networks (e.g., South Africa's MXit), and "verify from a bar code whether a drug is genuine or fake (mPedigree in Ghana and Sproxil in Nigeria).... Africa's influence on global technology is most marked in mobile banking: with its M Pesa service (M for mobile, pesa meaning money in Swahili), Kenyan operator Safaricom became the first-ever telecom company to create a mass mobile-banking service, setting industry standards now being copied from California to Kabul." In the disputed Kenyan general election in late 2007, "a handful of Nairobi code writers created Ushahidi (meaning testimony in Swahili), a data-mapping platform to collate and locate reports of unrest sent in by the public via text message, e mail and social media." The Ushahidi programme has been used to support crisis situations including the 2011 Japanese Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, and the 2010 Haiti earthquake, situations in which Ushahidi was applied by crisis managers, part of the reported 14,000 downloads of the programme in 128 countries.

Contributing to internet growth in Africa: "In 2007 just one fiber cable only partly connected sub-Saharan Africa to the world, and most of the continent logged on via satellite, which is expensive and slow. In the past two years, however, six more cables have arrived, linking the region to the U.S., Europe and Asia, and by 2013 that number will be 12....As a result, Internet traffic in Africa is among the fastest growing in the world.... Just as African bloggers have joined the global conversation, Africa's tech developers are joining the global marketplace. The next killer piece of code is as likely to be written in Africa as anywhere else. Amazon's revolutionary cloud-computing platform, which allows users to rent varying amounts of virtual computer capacity on which to build applications, was developed in Cape Town...."

The government of Kenya announced that in addition to building the "$7 billion Konza Technology City outside Nairobi" it would release to the public all its digital documents, becoming the first in Africa to be "data open." Kenya hopes to become a "technology hub" and is advocating supportive policy towards the state's ultimate aim of free mobile calls and email for every Kenyan who wants them. "Kenya's love for IT has earned it the nickname Silicon Savanna."

Agricultural apps developed in Kenya's iHub and m:Lab tech centres include: 'The Mobile Crop Disease Surveillance app, for example, ...a real-time alarm system run on text messaging. Another app, M-Farm, allows farmers to use texting to price their produce correctly, pool buying and selling power and keep in contact with suppliers and buyers."

The article reports wide variations in governmental positions across the African continent on open technology access: "Uganda and Swaziland have used suspensions of access to networking sites like Facebook....And journalist groups say Sudan and Tanzania, which has a version of WikiLeaks in JamiiForums, use Chinese-style malware to damage user systems and delete content. However, the Nigeria president used Facebook to announce his candidacy. "Twaweza and Uwezo in Tanzania and Kenya are merely the most prominent of scores of new African Web-based campaigns for state transparency and accountability."