Brokers of Belonging: Elders and Intermediaries in kinshasa’s Mobile Phone Culture

In the volume Mobile phones: the new talking drums of everyday Africa, De Bruijn et al. (2009) argue that ‘a mobile phone culture’ has emerged in Africa. They rightly contend that ‘Africa’s communication landscape has undergone tremendous change since the introduction of mobile phone technology’ (De Bruijn et al. 2009: 11). The transformations are not limited to communication practices but can be observed in all domains of the social, the political, the economic and the religious, as their case studies on healing, courtship, interactions with the state, and even fieldwork research from all over the continent document.