Upwardly Mobile in Africa

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Finally, Ssebuggwawo brakes at a collection of grim concrete and brick buildings situated at the crossing of two dirt roads. The outpost supports four village phone operators, whose stories show how the spread of telecommunications is providing a livelihood for thousands of Africans. Hasifa Nakitio, who looks to be in her early 30s, feeds 11 children—five of her own, plus six she takes care of for various reasons—with income from the village phone and by peddling cups full of matoke, a mashed-potato-like dish made from plantains. Nakitio says she is saving to buy a plot of land and her own house.

Ezeresi Serukeera, a mother of four who runs her village phone in Wabusana from a crude wooden booth, enlarged her house after she obtained a loan of about $385 to buy the phone gear. Serukeera, who paid back the loan in six months, even serves as a kind of local banker, a conduit for relatives in Kampala to send money home to their families. These people transfer airtime to Serukeera electronically, and she passes on the equivalent in cash minus a small commission, then resells the airtime minutes to other callers.

The operators gather with Ssebuggwawo in the dimly lit interior of one of the buildings, which quickly fills with curious children. The operators bombard him with complaints and suggestions. Why isn't MTN doing more to promote village phones? Why can't they sell talk time in increments of less than a minute? Why doesn't MTN's text message-based information service have more news relevant to farmers, providing, say, the price of pineapple rather than reports on the Iraq war? As more villagers get handsets, the village phone operators point out, they will need other sources of revenue, such as providing information. "We have to think of ways we can add value," Ssebuggwawo agrees, taking notes.

The mobile-phone industry is increasingly listening to people like these village operators, who are at the frontier of telecommunications expansion. Nokia's (NOK) latest phone for emerging markets, which retails for about $37 in Kenya, contains features such as a hookup for an external antenna, to better reach distant base stations, and software making it easier to track the length and cost of calls. "If we look at the next billion subscribers, the vast majority will come from emerging markets," says Kai Öistämö, Nokia's general manager for mobile phones. In India, Nokia Siemens Networks, an equipment joint venture with Germany's Siemens (SI), is taking the village phone concept a step further. The company is testing its so-called Village Connection, which allows a local entrepreneur to set up a wireless phone network for a few thousand dollars. Villagers can talk within the local system at a reduced rate, connecting to the more costly national network only for long-distance calls.

HAVE-NOTS
Of course, the spread of technology to places that have had none is bound to bring unforeseen consequences. Mobile phones can also be used to organize a guerrilla army. (The region around Wabusana was already the focal point of an armed conflict in the 1980s after the fall of Ugandan strongman Idi Amin.) And a new class of resentful have-nots could emerge among the millions of extremely poor people who still can't afford cell phones. Abraham Waigwa, a 28-year-old bricklayer who lives in Muruguru, complains he's having trouble competing with other masons whose phones allow them to be reached by potential employers. "I don't get jobs as often," he says. "My life is dragging."

But that seems to be the minority view. "Mobile technology has brought many fruits, and no bad things," insists Isaac Mahenia, a schoolteacher and part-time farmer in Muruguru. Abraham Maragua, truck driver Willson Maragua's 77-year-old father, agrees that life is finally getting better in the village, and that mobile phones are part of the change. "We feel it," says Maragua, who lives in a house with a dirt floor and old newspapers covering the interior walls. As a onetime political prisoner during Kenya's civil strife in the 1950s, he knows what he's talking about. Says Maragua: "We didn't suffer for nothing."

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Ewing is BusinessWeek's European regional editor.