The mobile phone is playing a crucial role in African society today. This is highlighted by a factoid that believes “the average Sub-
Saharan African woman touches her hair 37times a day and touches her phone 82
times a day.”

Mobile penetration in Africa has risen to 67 percent as of 2012; with researchers predicting “internet use on mobile phones will increase 20-fold in the next five years – double the rate of growth in the rest of the world!”

Africa is considered to be the world’s fastest growing smartphone market. Some
estimates suggest that by 2016 there will be one billion mobile phone subscriptions on the continent, equaling Africa’s total
population.
Some advances that have come out of
Africa’s mobile revolution include mobile
money services like Kenya’s M-pesa, that
allow people to transfer funds on their
mobile phones- even those without bank
accounts! Also, the spread of mobile phones across remote regions of Africa is enabling farmers to better market their products. For instance iCow, an SMS solution, guiding livestock farmers on best practice. Another application, M-Farm, eliminates the middlemen by democratizing market information required by small-scale farmers
to better negotiate prices.

Bogus drugs are a serious problem in many African countries. An estimated 45 percent of drugs in Nigeria are counterfeit. With the advances of the mobile phone in the health sector, when a patient buys drugs in a pharmacy, he just scratches off a panel to reveal a 10-digit code. He sends that number in a text message (which is free of charge) using a short dialing code. The patient receives a message confirming, or other-wise, the authenticity of those drugs within seconds. MPedigree is one example; this app validates genuine medicines and brings clarity through one of the most basic of technologies. The mobile phone in Africa has also helped to increase transparency in politics, as activists use mobile applications to monitor political violence and fight
against state control of free speech.

In 2012, CNN declared that mobile
technology had “immense” potential to
transform Africa’s “dysfunctional
educational system…as mobile phones –
cheaper to own and easier to run than PCs
– gain ground as tools for delivering
teaching content”. Already, we are starting
to see the beginnings of change. The BBC
also reported an increasing number of
initiatives using mobile technologies to
distribute educational materials, support
reading, and enable peer-to-peer learning
and remote tutoring through social
networking services. Mobiles
are streamlining education administration
and improving communication between
schools, teachers and parents. Mobile
phones are already being used to improve
teacher training and as a way of staying in
touch with university students, but can they really improve access to, as well as the
quality of higher education on a significant
scale....?
Culled from www.bevibez.com/2015/10/how-mobile-phone-is-transforming-world.html?m=1