Wireless Africa

Article

A Huffington Post column by Craig and Marc Kielburger describing Africa as the world’s fastest-growing cell phone market, with subscribers rising from 7.5 million in 1999 to more than 76 million by 2004 and expected to double again by decade’s end. Opening with an anecdote about a Maasai warrior’s cell phone ringing mid-conversation, the piece frames mobile phones as connecting remote African communities long cut off by unreliable landlines and slow hand-delivered messages, following the privatisation of phone services and the spread of cheap prepaid cards across the continent.