Cellphones Catapult Rural Africa to 21st Century

Here's an interesting article that my friend Brandon Crook sent me from nytimes.com. I live on nytimes.com and you should too!

Cellphones Catapult Rural Africa to 21st Century

By SHARON LaFRANIERE
Published: August 25, 2005
YANGUYE, South Africa -

On this dry mountaintop, 36-year-old Bekowe Skhakhane does even the simplest tasks the hard way. Fetching water from the river takes four hours a day. To cook, she gathers sticks and musters a fire. Light comes from candles. At the Nqala store in rural KwaZulu-Natal, Christina Mulembe, 11, buys an access card for her mother, who lives five miles away. But when Ms. Skhakhane wants to talk to her husband, who works in a steel factory 250 miles away in Johannesburg, she does what many in more developed regions do: she takes out her mobile phone.

People like Ms. Skhakhane have made Africa the world's fastest-growing cellphone market. From 1999 through 2004, the number of mobile subscribers in Africa jumped to 76.8 million, from 7.5 million, an average annual increase of 58 percent. South Africa, the continent's richest nation, accounted for one-fifth of that growth.

Asia, the next fastest-expanding market, grew by an annual average of just 34 percent in that period... (Click Here for the rest of the article)