Cell Phones in Africa: A growing phenomenon with numerous possibilities

I recently saw a very interesting lecture (online) by Dr. Joel Selanikio, pediatrician and co-founder of Datadyne, a non-profit that works on improving the quality and quantity of public health data.  Although he focuses his efforts primarily on vaccination issues, this particular lecture concerned the growing opportunities regarding cell phones and computers in the developing world, particularly Africa.  Probably the most memorable and consequential statistics that Selanikio brought to light pertained to the remarkable growth rate of cell phone adoption in Africa and around the world.  In the year 2000, only 20% of the world’s population was in range of cell phone network.  Compare that to 80% of the world in 2008.  This increase is particularly noticeable in Africa. The reason that this is so remarkable is because the people who are buying these cell phones at alarming rates, are among the poorest people in the world.  The once widely accepted belief that cell-phones were only for top tier individuals in society, no longer holds true.  If people find something extremely useful, they will do whatever it takes to buy it.  There are several reasons that Africans are adopting cell-phones at a higher rate than any other continent.  Of course, there is the obvious fact that there is more room for growth, allowing for a higher adoption rate.  This room for growth combined with the fact that cell phones are cheaper than landlines, are not government monopolized and neither good credit nor a permanent address is needed in order to purchase one, allows for not only city dwellers to purchase cell phones, but more importantly, rural communities all over Africa.  As Selanikio points out in his lecture, this cell phone growth is in no way aided by UNAIDS efforts or a World Bank project, this is simply regular people buying cell phones through means of their own. 

So why does all this matter? This phenomenon, or revolution, should really concern anyone who is interested in public health, or the dissemination of any kind of information.  People in the western world, particularly marketers and public health practitioners, have often wondered, “What could we do if everyone in the world had a computer like ours?” What we should be wondering, however, is “What can we do with the computers that everyone already has?”  Cell phones are essentially little computers that 80% of the world now has at their fingertips.  Particularly noteworthy is the low price of communication that these computers allow for.  For a mere 20 cents per text message, someone in rural western Kenya can text someone in Washington DC, receiving a reply in a matter of seconds.  Furthermore, almost all of these cell-phones have the ability to do simple searches on the web, and although it will be a long time before everyone in developing countries will have access to rich internet (graphics, flash etc.), they already do have the ability to conduct simple searches and receive text based information.  In my opinion, I believe this technology allows for endless possibilities, particularly in the health industry.  Selanikio touched on a few interesting ideas. He recommended letting doctors and clinicians in rural Africa have access to reference materials for drugs via sms (short message service).  Doctors could access this database and find drug interactions, doses and descriptions easily and quickly and then share this information with their patients.  This is something that doctors in the west can easily access through the Internet a resource that many take for granted.  Other medical usages include managing patients records on sim cards (essentially a memory card).  This would allow for portable records in a world of limited paper work and filing. 

In terms of HIV/AIDS prevention, I believe that this revolution lends itself to several possibilities as well.  The growing cell phone phenomenon is as appealing to teenagers in Africa as it is in the United States.  Text messages and text based Internet searches can easily be conducted by teens, and the dissemination of information from Aids prevention organizations could promote Aids awareness and prevention methods to an engaged audience, via a technology that they are already infatuated with.  One possibility would be an organization that readily answers all questions about HIV/AIDS via text message.  Questions could be submitted anonymously and answers could be received quickly. 

I believe that the cell phone phenomenon, or as Selanikio calls it, the Invisible Computer Revolution, that Africa is currently experiencing is one that is underrated, but ripe with possibilities.  It is an untapped resource that could not only aid the public health sector, but marketers around the world.  Again, ask yourself, what we can do now that for the first time in history, humanity is experiencing the ability to communicate cheaply and efficiently with everyone else in the world.