Mobile phone communication in the mobile margins of Africa: The ‘communication revolution’ evaluated from below

Abstract

By now the mobile phone has become an everyday device on the African continent. Even Africans who do not possess a handset themselves are familiar with its existence and may refer to mobile telephony in their daily conversations. Yet it was only in the 1990s that the first African cities acquired mobile phone connections, and only about ten years later that mobile telephony became possible in many rural areas.