9
Mobile telephony: closing the
gap
Christiana Charles-Iyoha
Introduction
With about 4 billion mobile phones in use globally, the mobile
phone has become the most ubiquitous communication device in
the world, having experienced exponential growth, especially in
countries and regions with less wired infrastructure. To an extent,
its affordable, accessible and educationally appropriate access
appears to facilitate digital inclusion at about all levels, therefore
implying large rays of hope that the digital divide is close to being
bridged and we will all soon be in ‘digitopia’.
There is no doubt that mobile phones have increased teleden‑
sity in countries with less wired infrastructure. More recently, the
pervasive use of mobile phones in innovative ways has opened
vistas of opportunities to deep rural and peri-urban communities
hitherto excluded from telecommunications services.
Globally, this new window of communications has given both
voice and greater decision-making powers to disadvantaged and
vulnerable groups, in addition to creating opportunities for par‑
ticipation in governance. This is because, through mobile phones,
more people now have greater and speedier reach to information
at much lower cost.
Mobile phones are increasingly becoming imposing and pow‑
erful ICT tools for participating in the global market. Mobiles
have also become a key component of civil society activism and
have been used successfully to mobilise large numbers of people
across geographical borders in human rights campaigns. Amnesty
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International has used mobile phones successfully for mobilising
support for human rights campaigns. Other examples include
New Tactics/SendingOutanSMS,1 MobileActive,2 and kiwanja.
net,3 a website that hosts a mobile applications database and is a
resource on the innovative and transformative use of mobiles in
development. There is also a network of civil society organisa‑
tions (Pan Africa Mobile Network, PAMONET) who are actively
engaged in using mobile phones for advocacy campaigns.
As emphasised in Mobiles in-a-box (see Chapter 4), advocacy
using mobile phones is:
• Dynamic – unlike other communications devices, the mobile
phone is usually carried with the user at all times, therefore
it offers the possibility of instant, simultaneous communica‑
tions.
• Diverse – the mobile phone connects previously unconnected
people and new audiences through the potential viral effect of
forwarding messages.
• Discreet – the camera included in many modern phones allows
for filming and photography in situations where use of a con‑
ventional camera would be dangerous.
• Direct – the mobile phone allows for communication directly to
and from the communities that advocates are working with.
Mobile phones provide individual users and communities with
valuable access to a range of data services for personal and com‑
mercial purposes. They also allow them increased engagement
in civil society and in the democratic processes of their countries.
This engagement may take many forms: monitoring elections,
receiving job alerts via SMS (text message), running small busi‑
nesses, reporting illegal logging, accessing up-to-date market price
information or providing an alternative form of media access.4
Mobiles have the potential to socially empower women in
restrictive cultures, by aiding their interaction with men without
being in the same place or having face-to-face contact, as well as to
assist women in organising and coordinating campaigns and advo‑
cacy targeted at fostering women’s inclusion in good governance.
Innovative applications of mobile phones in education, health
and even financial transactions provide women with economic
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empowerment, increased learning opportunities, and improved
market access for their products as they easily access more timely
information, more services and, to an extent, gain more voice in
public affairs as they can send text messages on issues of public
policy concern.
Besides, there is growing consensus amongst development
workers and even technologists that mobile phones can play an
important role in reducing poverty, improving education and
healthcare, enhancing political participation and empowerment,
as well as facilitating the achievement of some of the millennium
development goals, thereby promoting sustainable development.
This role of mobile phones as tools for development and socio-
economic transformation, coupled with the opportunities mobile
activism presents for more effective civil society campaigns and
advocacy that facilitates inclusion at all levels, is huge. However,
the opportunities for the use of this technology for advocacy and
inclusion are undermined by poverty, culture and urban bias in
connectivity.
Poverty
The high poverty levels in Africa impact women significantly
more than men, thereby accounting for the critical disparities
between men and women in access to mobile phones and the
range of services offered. The buying power of economically
disadvantaged women is very limited – to food and very basic
essentials – which denies this group of women access to exclu‑
sive ownership of this communication device. Financial poverty
therefore excludes poor women from the emerging benefits of the
many innovative uses of mobile phones.
Women, as a group, account for over 70 per cent of people
living in poverty, particularly in developing and least-developed
economies, and 50 per cent of the populace worldwide generally.
In Africa, women form nearly 50 per cent of a population that is
under very heavy pressures from a social organisational pattern
that is inherently unprepared for the actualisation of the millen‑
nium development goals, sustainable development and the socio-
economic transformation of poor, vulnerable and marginalised
peoples, largely located in the rural and peri-urban areas.
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Women’s poverty is further heightened by limited or no access
to productive resources. The Food and Agriculture Organisation
(FAO) recently noted that the contribution of women and girls
would be far greater if they were able to have equal access to
essential resources and services. They also found that women in
rural areas were even more disadvantaged, with far less access to
information and technology than men. This naturally limited both
their influence and their ability to participate in decision-making
processes.5
The unequal power relations between men and women con‑
tribute to differential access to the effective use of mobile phones
for participation and involvement in the several innovative ways
this technology is being used to foster inclusion in nearly every
aspect of life.
Culture
In restrictive cultures, certain socio-cultural and religious norms
that prohibit women from using public access points also limit
the potential of mobile phones to have an impact on entire popu‑
lations. Apart from the fact that many poor women who cannot
afford to own a mobile phone are excluded from the mainstream
of this communication device’s usage and influence, their limited
status in the home also affects their ability to use their husband’s
phone as even such usage is very likely to be restricted to tak‑
ing place only when the husband is at home with the wife.
Additionally, patriarchal, culturally defined roles that locate
women in time-consuming activities in the care economy can
limit women’s optimisation of this technology for participation
and inclusion.
Urban bias in connectivity
Though Africa is currently experiencing exponential growth in
ownership and use of mobile phones, the fact remains that a
number of rural communities are still largely excluded from access‑
ing this telecommunication service on account of both the cost of
acccess and a lack of network coverage. However, this is a tempo‑
rary setback as mobile phone service providers are working hard to
ensure mobile network coverage in deep rural communities.
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Expertise
The knowledgeable and effective use of mobile phones amongst
urban, peri-urban and rural women can expand their access to
knowledge, economic opportunities and centres of decision-
making, as well as facilitate their participation and inclusion in
decision-making at all levels of society.
Additionally, capacitating women in this way could facilitate
the achievement of the millennium development goals in Africa as
women using mobile phones for next generation services would
more easily find spaces to organise and connect across geographi‑
cal boundaries. For example, the results of a study on mobile
phone usage for agricultural information mining in south-western
Uganda indicates that more male farmers (59.3 per cent) used
phones than female farmers (40.7 per cent). However, more female
(66.7 per cent) than male farmers (33.3 per cent) requested infor‑
mation on natural resource management (NRM) and agriculture.6
The analysis of gender in the use of the phones across the
parishes found that more male farmers made use of the phones
in two parishes (Rwanyana – 77.9 per cent and Mugandu – 60
per cent) while more female farmers (66.7 per cent) made use of
the telephone in Kitooma parish. The analysis of the purpose of
phone calls showed that women used the phone to request infor‑
mation on NRM and agriculture more than men across the three
parishes, while men used the phone more for personal calls and
to look for market information.
In conclusion, mobile phones present opportunities for focus‑
ing efforts on increasing women’s participation, empowerment
and transformation through inclusion in the decision-making
process in an effective and powerful way. This would both bridge
the gender digital divide and achieve competitive and fair inclu‑
sion at all levels. Such participation would also ensure that gender
issues were taken into account in development policy.
Recommendations
An urgent, but very strategic, inclusive and cascadable pro‑
gramme of engagement activities with women’s organisations
across Africa is proposed. Such a programme will use the machin‑
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ery of women’s networks in Africa, grassroots women’s organisa‑
tions, the media, parliamentarians, policy makers, ICT institutions
and the private sector to develop a community of rural women as
mobile telephony socio-economic resource experts engaged in
building rural knowledge economies to fast track the inclusion
and knowledgeable participation of African rural women in the
global knowledge economy.
The project will strengthen rural women’s capacity to use
mobile phones by setting up basic pay-phone call centres that
provide some protection from the elements. These will enable
women to use mobile phones not only to make and receive calls
but also to access next-generation services and, ultimately, to
network, collaborate, access pertinent development information
and even work on advocacy. The self-sustaining mobile teleph‑
ony-mediated access and capacity-building point, comprising a
mobile phone call centre, will serve as a mediated access point
to facilitate the participation and inclusion of a large number
of women in peri-urban and rural areas in the growing annual
international 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence and
other such gender-related programmes. In 2007, WOUGNET7 (see
Chapter 8), in collaboration with Womensnet, South Africa and
APC Africa Women (AAW), conducted an SMS-based campaign,
sending out SMS on each of the 16 Days of Activism that would
encourage individuals and organisations to speak out, stand out,
and commit to preventing violence against women. There were
over 170 participants drawn from 13 countries in Africa, Asia,
Europe, North and South America. Individuals could contribute
a short message or slogan on the theme of the campaign. The
chosen slogan was sent out via SMS with the individual/organisa‑
tion credited as the source of the message. People could also send
news of the activities and events they organised in support of the
16 Days of Activism. Individuals could also register their mobile
number to receive the SMS that were sent out during the 16 Days
of Activism. The daily SMS were posted to a blog on the Take
Back the Tech campaign website8 and the WOUGNET blog.9
The mobile phone call centre will also provide a help line for
medical and social emergencies and a capacity-building centre
where disadvantaged women who have never seen or touched
a phone will learn about the technology and its numerous ben‑
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efits. Such a centre would facilitate a forum for the interaction of
women and girls in addition to creating space for disadvantaged
women to embrace the present and emerging benefits of mobile
phones by offering an ICT that is accessible, affordable and appro‑
priate to their literacy levels. Such a centre may just be all that eco‑
nomically and educationally vulnerable women located either in
urban or rural areas need in order to organise, adopt and adapt to
the information society as well as to participate in mobile-enabled
social actions that advocate women’s issues.
Gendered capacitating projects should address the livelihood
challenges of rural and peri-urban women’s current limited access
to knowledge, resources, economic opportunities for sustainable
livelihoods and access to centres of decision-making, alongside
the need for proficient use and ownership of mobile phones. The
programme would therefore, through interactive information
services enabled by an enhanced capacity to use mobile phones
for information management, facilitate access to development
information on agriculture and health, to financial and basic social
services, and to information on government support services.
The dissemination of life-transforming development infor‑
mation through mobile phones, as well as capacity building on
optimal mobile phone usage to bottom-of-the-pyramid individu‑
als in rural and peri-urban communities in Africa, will hopefully
facilitate the full participation of women in Africa’s emerging
knowledge economy as well as the global knowledge economy.
A pilot study in Lesotho indicates that access to mobile phones
has transformed the lives of rural women farmers, boosting
income and expanding knowledge.
The phone has transformed the women farmers’ lives complete‑
ly – they are able to market their produce, access information
on prices, and it has made them so confident.10
This programme will broaden the pathways to inclusion and
good governance through the use of a technology that is readily
accessible, affordable and available even in remote communities
where the literacy challenge hitherto impeded the use of comput‑
ers and computer-based internet for information flows.
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Notes
1. New Tactics, http://www.newtactics.org, accessed 21 June 2009.
2. MobileActive, www.mobileactive.org, accessed 21 June 2009.
3. kiwanja.net, www.kiwanja.net, accessed 21 June 2009.
4. Tactical Tech, Mobiles in-a-box, http//mobiles.tacticaltech.org, accessed
21 June 2009.
5. FAO – Various articles, http://tinyurl.com/n6fpwl, accessed 21 June 2009.
6. Masuki, K.F.G., Mowo, J.G., Tanui, J., Tukahirwa, J., Kamugisha, R.,
Ayesiga, R. and Adera E.O. (2008) ‘Mobile applications in improving
communication and information delivery for agricultural development in
Uganda: Challenges and opportunities’, paper presented at the 1st Workshop
on Mobile Application for Development (M4D) in East Africa, Kampala,
November.
7. WOUGNET, www.wougnet.org, accessed 21 June 2009.
8. Take Back The Tech, http://www.takebackthetech.net/blogathon, accessed
21 June 2009.
9. WOUGNET blog, http://www.wougnet.org/cms/index.php?option=com_
mamblog&Itemid=83, accessed 21 June 2009.
10. IRIN News, Lesotho (2009) ‘Women farmers get mobile phone know-how’,
4 June, accessed 17 June 2009.
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