Preparing for a mobile phone uprising in Africa
The trouble with people who know about mobile phone technology is that they are a lot better at good ideas than they are at explaining to non-techies what their good ideas are for. So I fell upon SMS Uprising: Mobile activism in Africa, a collection of essays by people who either write mobile applications or transfer them to the field, hoping that at last I would understand not so much what's going on as how.
To begin even nearer the beginning than this book does – and in case I am not the last person in the world to know – let me point out that SMS stands for (thank you WikiAnswers) Short Message Service, which is "a communications protocol allowing the interchange of short text messages between mobile telephone devices."
It adds, helpfully: "SMS text messaging is the most widely used data application on the planet, with 2.4 billion active users." Mobile telephony relies on GSM, or Global System for Mobile Communications, access to which is controlled by individual countries whose approach – monopolistic like Kenya's Safaricom or open and competitive like that ofUganda – has a direct impact on airtime costs, which in turn affects how many people have access to the system.
Among other key considerations are the age (and cost) of mobile handsets in Africa – mainly pre-2003 and, therefore, neither web nor data enabled – and the fees charged by handset manufacturers to operators trying to develop new applications.
Most of this is covered in the first essay, on the economics of the industry. It explains how China and Libya are using monopolistic deals to capture national mobile telephony markets. The advantage to a government of monopolies, of course, is control – not only business control, but also control over content. Bad news for those who see access to a mobile as a powerful weapon in the defence of democracy.
But the essay's author, Nathan Eagle, is particularly interested in the research potential of the information automatically collected by operators about the usage and location of every mobile handset. A force for good or evil? It could be a vital tool to understanding better the sociology of rural Africa, for example. But it might be just what a corrupt government is seeking to monitor citizens' behaviour.
The mobile's capacity to stimulate, record and publish images of protest, for example, has already been established in places as far apart as Iran and Burma.
As the Guardian's Tania Branigan reported recently, ChinaMobile, the state owned operator, shuts down texting at the first sign of trouble – a policy pursued by the Ethiopian government, which has only just legalised SMS.
Optimistic outlook
But the optimists – and the activists like Christian Kreutz, who wrote the second essay in this collection – believe mobiles can extend participation, monitoring and transparency, decentralise networks and provide opportunities for local innovation.
Mobile has greater penetration than television (although not radio, with which it can work as a kind of poor man's internet, with radio broadcasts soliciting citizen journalism to report on local events and conditions). The essential element is not high technology, but universality – and people on the ground who can frame questions, find or write software and then recruit users. SMS activists are the sons and daughters of the first generation of internet users – passionate about open source technology and shared experience.
Theory is one thing: but where these essays really come alive is in the descriptions of projects that have already worked.
Take Amanda Atwood's account of Kubatana, a social and political action initiative in Zimbabwe that began on the internet, but to extend its reach adapted Ken Bank's FrontlineSMS to send out regular news updates to people who had either no news source at all, or none that was trustworthy. This was then developed to find out, during the delicate negotiations between Mugabe's Zanu-PF and the Movement for Democratic Change, what people wanted. It was soon discovered that the system was valued as much for its capacity to operate as a genuine information exchange, putting people from across the country in touch with one another. It triumphed at moments of crisis – during the 2008 elections, for example, where users were able to warn others of local developments. "Kubatana! Results have not been officially announced yet. The MDC has claimed victory based on preliminary counts ...". or "Kubatana! Some poll stations asking foreign borns for renunciation certificates. This is NOT a requirement ...".
SMS doesn't always work (sometimes texts are just too slow). But this is a handbook for the small NGO or social change activist who is daunted by technology. Help is at hand, and SMS Uprising will help you find it.
BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS
* 'SMS Uprising: Mobile Activism in Africa' is edited by Sokari Ekine and published by Pambazuka Press.
* This review was originally published by The Guardian as part of the Katine project.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at Pambazuka News.