Two Posts on Mobile Phones in Africa Worth Reading

Found both of these gems this weekend. I don’t have much to add, they’re already so well written:

Whythawk – Internet Bubble 2.0: the future of dotcom depends on the mobile phone

And you don’t necessarily need the Internet for this at all.

What people want from the Internet is becoming more easily achievable through their cellphones. What happens to Internet music downloads when your iPod can do it directly? Social networking makes more sense on a small device or phone that is always with you than on a computer which is fixed in space. And the nature of that small device changes the way you interact.

Ethan Zuckerman – Geek tracking, African hacking

Eagle points out that 59% of mobile phone users are in the developing world. In Kilifi, he’s able to pay for his cab with his mobile, something he can’t do in the US. Africa is the fastest growing mobile phone market in the world. While there are only 200,000 households with electricity, there are 7 million mobile phone users. He tells us about a trip to “cellphone alley” in Nairobi, where he picked out the innards, a colored case, a keypad and had the phone soldered together, giving him an unlocked GSM phone for $15.