ABSTRACT
Mobile telephony is considered to be particularly important for development, especially in countries lacking a fixed-line infrastructure and those where a lot of sharing takes place (see Chapter 4). There is some evidence that mobile phones raise long-term growth rates, that their impact is twice as big in developing nations as in developed ones, and that an extra ten phones per 100 people in a typical developing country increases GDP growth by 0.6 percentage points (Waverman et al. 2005). Many see mobiles as an opportunity for developing countries to close the digital divide, especially those in Africa. Yet, we do not seem to possess consistent data on mobile phones in Africa. Different organizations and authors use different definitions. Examination of the available data reveals that it is often still unclear what is meant by it – and what is not. Moreover, as a result of different definitions and concepts there are many different figures on the presence of mobile phones, ranging from almost zero in the narrowest definition (ownership) to almost 100 per cent in the broadest definition (access).
