{"id":93574,"date":"2015-02-22T10:31:06","date_gmt":"2015-02-22T10:31:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=93574"},"modified":"2015-02-22T10:33:11","modified_gmt":"2015-02-22T10:33:11","slug":"how-africa-caught-mobile-web-fever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=93574","title":{"rendered":"How Africa caught mobile web fever"},"content":{"rendered":"

If when you say internet, you think of a computer, then you probably don’t live in an African country.<\/p>\n

The continent has some of the lowest fixed-broadband subscription rates in the world, with most people’s first encounter with the world wide web coming via their mobile phones.<\/p>\n

[contextly_sidebar id=”V4j1BeGjIEW2Pw6DdimpXGgaxUT8BRgW”]Around 70% of mobile users browse the internet on their devices, and Africa’s mobile broadband growth is increasing at a rate of more than 40% — twice the global average.<\/p>\n

This is largely due to the weak land-line infrastructure on the continent, which makes connecting through a desktop computer difficult.<\/p>\n

Low-cost or second-hand feature phones are also much cheaper to buy, which has made them ubiquitous across the continent, and it is estimated that by 2016 Africa will have a billion mobile phones. Feature devices also stay charged for longer — a crucial requirement in a part of the world where the supply of power is irregular and unreliable.<\/p>\n

More people in Africa have a mobile phone than access to electricity.<\/p>\n

“More people in Africa have a mobile phone than access to electricity,” according to Toby Shapshak, editor and publisher of Stuff Magazine.<\/p>\n

“That means, for a phone to be functional, it needs decent battery life. These feature phones have anywhere up to a week.”\"mobile<\/a><\/p>\n

This has created a unique environment where mobile technology have been adapted for a wide range of usages, from lowering information barriers and improving access to financial and health services to boosting commerce and bringing people together.<\/p>\n

Mobile money transfer systems such as M-Pesa, which launched in Nairobi in 2007, allow customers to send cash to remote areas with the touch of a button.<\/p>\n

The service has nearly 17 million active customers who make more than US$1.1 billion worth of transactions per month.<\/p>\n

And if you’re worried that the medicines you bought might be counterfeit, you can check their authenticity through mPedigree, a mobile application which gives you a “genuine” or “fake” answer after you text the drug’s serial number.<\/p>\n

Mobile phone technology has also moved into sectors outside the traditional tech remit. Farmers can access information about the weather, real-time market prices, and new farming tips though mobile apps like Farmerline and Esoko.<\/p>\n

Mobiles have even infiltrated arts and culture, with Badilisha Poetry X-Change, the world’s largest archive of African poets featured on a mobile first website.<\/p>\n

The spread of internet-enabled cell phones has also had an effect on the fiber of society: “The impact of Internet access via mobile devices on the continent has been a game changer on the continent,” according to Nmachi Jidenma, manager of mobile disruptors at PayPal. “Access to social networks has given youth a platform for self-expression and civic participation in ways that are having real impact on elections, governance and accountability.”<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

Source: CNN<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If when you say internet, you think of a computer, then you probably don’t live in an African country. The continent has some of the lowest fixed-broadband subscription rates in the world, with most people’s first encounter with the world wide web coming via their mobile phones. [contextly_sidebar id=”V4j1BeGjIEW2Pw6DdimpXGgaxUT8BRgW”]Around 70% of mobile users browse the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[18,38],"class_list":["post-93574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","tag-dr-akwasi-osei","tag-palaver-newspaper"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=93574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93574\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=93574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=93574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=93574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}