The Grassroots Mobile Revolution in Africa

It didn't take us long to find it. After all, mobile phone masts aren't that easy to hide, and Masindi is a tightly-knit, flat little west Ugandan town. After a few short minutes, driving past countless mobile phone dealerships, internet cafes and village phone operators, there it was.

I was last in Masindi in 1998, not that long ago in the grand scheme of things, but a lifetime in the short history of the mobile phone. Back then this mast wasn't there, and neither were any of the mobile phone shops, internet cafes and village phone operators. The only phone line out of town - if and when it was working - was courtesy of the local post office. Every couple of weeks we would drive here to collect our post from the Ugandan Wildlife Authority, post our letters, have a cold beer, buy a few ‘luxuries' and occasionally attempt to phone home. No text messaging in those days.

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Kenyan techies headed to jail

If the new Kenya Communications Amendment bill becomes law, all Kenyan techies and computer owners with pay a fine of shs 1 million, or risk a jail term or both. Why?

Read more from Rebecca Wanjiku.

Is Africa Ready for Google

Read as Al Kags congratulates Google's first employee, and his assessment of IT growth in Africa, and what he sees as an impediment to this growth.

However, we need to accept, Africa, that the largest impediment to our development is our cultural outlook - not the traditions and customs but the way we do business and our openness to new concepts. I recently had a meeting with a government official with regard to accessing some of the records that they have, digitizing it at my own cost and sharing the digital data with them for them to develop its use by wider sharing it. Amazingly, his first reaction was "absolutely not." Why? Because it is not done in government. When we got over that, we found that there is a huge fear with regard to what the information will be used for.

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