The quote went like this “The cell phone is the single most transformative technology for development.”
Amazingly enough, in parts of the world like Bundibugyo, people who live on two, one or even half a dollar a day have become avid users of a technology that some say has allowed the third world to skip over the use of the PC as a development aid.
I’m sometimes embarrassed to admit that in our remote and rural part of the world, surrounded by nationals who practice polygamy and witchcraft and believe that cannibals are in their midst, we have a cell tower close enough to provide us frequent, if intermittent and unreliable, coverage. Perhaps even more surprisingly, not only do we own and use cell phones as a team, most often calling out because we are rarely able to catch each other within coverage area, locals around us also use phones. In fact, our home solar power is a coveted source of charging and unless we set some serious boundaries we often end up in an endless cycle, rotating phones through our chargers for our impoverished neighbors.
A cell phone was one of the first perks we provided to our workers, and cell phone cards holding precious minutes is one way we provide benefits. You, and we, might be tempted to think of cell phones as an unnecessary luxury for the poorest of the poor, yet cellular technology is providing an efficiency for rural Africans that is helping along important growth in deficient local economies.
Using cell phones to find the current price of cocoa beans in other parts of Uganda may someday help our local cocoa farmers to negotiate for a fairer price on the beans they sell to the local “big boss man” who exports their cocoa to the city (right now our farmers make only 1/3 of what other Ugandans make on raw, dry cocoa beans). Cell phones can also help prevent the over-supply that happens when too many Nyahuka townspeople travel to Lake Albert and bring back fresh fish for the big Saturday market. Calling to Congo, where most of our villagers travel to buy the big sacks of rice, cassava flour and beans that they resell cup-by-cup for profit could allow locals to decide whether the trip’s worth it and how far in to travel for the best deal.
Economics of business aside, quality of life issues are greatly affected by handheld technology. In Bundibugyo a bike is a status symbol, very few are lucky enough to own motorcycles and I only know one man who owns a vehicle. Though bota botas (motorcycle taxis) are everywhere, most people can’t afford to use them very often. As a result, Ugandans from the youngest school children to the oldest widows, walk many kilometers daily or weekly to get wherever they need to go, often finding out when they get there that they shouldn’t have come. A simple cell phone call can save hours of hot and tiring and barefoot travel by informing that the visitor has already left, the father has already died, or the small child has been sent to a hospital in the city because of malaria.
People come to us almost every day asking to use our phones. They come carrying some tiny slip of paper with a few numbers scribbled on it. Usually they talk about family illness and needing to find out how much money is needed to help care for the sick one far away. When I hand them the phone, most men dial away thankfully while most women hand it back sheepishly indicating they have no idea how to use it. They handle it gingerly, after I dial, as if it is alive and perhaps “white”, despite their usual physicality they don’t hold it too close to their ear. But they, like us, are soon caught up in the nearness of the voice on the other end, perhaps a familiar one, giving them the news they need so badly to hear, and I catch these same women moments later gesticulating wildly as they carry on animated discussion via the modern marvel that Jeffrey Sachs, in a recent Newsweek article, calls “transformative technology.”
.