NAIROBI, Kenya: AFRICANS ADAPT CELL PHONE TECHNOLOGY TO SUIT CONTINENT....

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NAIROBI, Kenya 16 September 2005 Sapa-AP

AFRICANS ADAPT CELL PHONE TECHNOLOGY TO SUIT CONTINENT'S HARSH
REALITIES

Putting cell phone technology into the hands of Africans has
resulted in ingenious solutions to everyday problems on the
world's poorest continent - and in huge growth in the
telecommunications business.

Kenyan and South African researchers have used cell phones to
monitor wildlife. Fishermen and farmers can quickly gather
information from several areas to help determine where and
when they can get the best prices for their produce. Africans
have even found a way to turn airtime into a virtual currency.

All this on a continent whose people were long considered too
poor to afford cell phones.

"We all misread the market," said Michael Joseph, chief
executive officer of Safaricom, one of two service providers
in Kenya. Joseph said the market was underestimated because
entrepreneurs relied on data about the formal economy, such
as GDP figures.

That ignored a "very strong and informal economy, which allows
Africans to live beyond the figures indicated by official
statistics," said Martin de Koning, corporate communications
chief for Celtel, one of Africa's leading cell phone
companies.

The relatively low use of landlines may also have fooled
entrepreneurs. But Africans didn't pass up land lines because
they didn't want phones. The problem was that getting
connected was difficult for the unemployed or informally
employed, people without the cash deposit and patience to
wait months for a connection. Landlines are also often out of
service because of poor maintenance and theft of copper
cables.

Cellular subscribers accounted for 74.6 percent of all
telephone subscribers in Africa in 2004, according to the
U.N.'s International Telecommunication Union, which is
responsible for standardization, coordination and development
of international telecommunications.

Africa now has the fastest growing mobile phone industry in
the world -with some 100 million of its estimated 870 million
people listed as subscribers, Celtel's Chairman Mo Ibrahim
said.

Last year, the number of subscribers in Africa south of the
Sahara increased by 67 percent, compared to 10 percent in
Western Europe. There were more new mobile phone customers in
Africa than in North America, Ibrahim said.

The growth is being realized even as African governments seek
to reap huge revenues from subscribers and service providers
in the form of high license fees, customs duties, special
mobile call taxes and other charges.

In Africa, mobile communications have created a US$25 billion
(?20.3 billion) industry that did not exist 10 years ago. Of
this, some US$2 billion (?1.62 billion) from hundreds of
thousands of indigenous entrepreneurs selling calling credit,
Celtel's Ibrahim said.

The uses to which Africans have put all those phones offer
insight into life on their continent.

Cash-strapped wildlife researchers in Kenya and South Africa
have put no-frills cell phones in weatherproof cases with a
GPS receiver, memory card and software to operate the system.
The unit, placed on a collar, is then tied around the neck of
an elephant.

As the elephants roam, "the GPS receives coordinates,
downloads them onto the memory chip - and then every hour,
the phone wakes up and sends a (short text message) of the
last hour's coordinates to a central server," said Safaricom
Joseph. Then the phone goes to sleep until it's needed again,
preserving battery power.

The technology has enabled South Africa's researchers to save
up to 60 percent in costs for tracking wildlife, said
Professor Wouter van Hoven of the University of Pretoria's
Center for Wildlife Management.

Fisherman Omar Abdulla Saidi, standing beside a fishing boat
propelled by a triangular sail in Zanzibar, an Indian Ocean
archipelago off Tanzania, uses his cell phone to track
markets.

The same is true for farmers, said Amina Harun, 45, who has
grown and sold mangoes, oranges and other fresh fruits for 18
years in neighboring Kenya's port city of Mombasa.

Harun said cell phones ended the days when she had to walk for
hours, searching for a working public phone to call traders in
various markets to find the best prices for produce from her
six-acre (2.43-hectare) farm.

Thanks to cell phones, "we can easily link up with customers,
brokers and the market," Harun said, seated between two piles
of watermelons at Kenya's largest fresh fruit and vegetable
trading center, the Wakulima Market.

Wilson Kuria Macharia, head of the traders' association at the
market, said he no longer has to spend between two weeks and a
month traveling across Kenya and neighboring Tanzania in
search of fresh vegetables.

"A few mobile phone calls take care of what used to be the
most grueling part of the business," Macharia, 61, said as
workers offloaded a truckload of carrots.

Good communications have also brought stiffer competition
between traders - translating to better prices for farmers,
said Macharia who has been in the business for 41 years.

People have opened public telephone centers linked to cell
phone networks across Africa, creating much-needed employment.

One service allows subscribers to transfer prepaid call
credit, or airtime, from one phone to another through short
text messages.

"Airtime is a currency of sorts. You can sell airtime and you
can get real money. Or you can trade that airtime for
something else to somebody else, who can then sell that
airtime again," Safaricom's Joseph said.

The ability to trade in airtime is useful in Africa, where the
costs of transferring small amounts of money through banks or
other financial institutions are relatively high, he said.

"We are developing unique ways to use the phone, which has not
been done anywhere else or is unique in Africa," Joseph
said. "I always think that (cell phone technology) was
designed for Africa, not for Europe - because it is such a
perfect fit" for the impoverished continent.