Participatory Effects of Mobile Phones in Kenya

BBC documentary piece.

URL = http://news.bbc.co.uk/nolavconsole/ukfs_news/hi/newsid_6230000/newsid_6234500/nb_rm_6234593.stm

"Mobile phones in Africa are helping to provide better services, economic growth and even democratic rights.

Paul Mason reports from Kenya on how technology has stepped in where governments and aid agencies have failed."

Description

"Paul Mason in his two-part series writes about the economic impact of mobile phones, but more importantly, about how mobiles are transforming local politics.

"With one in three adults carrying a cellphone in Kenya, mobile telephony is having an economic and social impact whose is hard to grasp if you are used to living in a country with good roads, democracy and the internet. In five years the number of mobiles in Kenya has grown from one million to 6.5 million - while the number of landlines remains at about 300,000, mostly in government offices. I decided to make a journey through Kenya to gauge the impact on the ground: the plan was to go from Mombasa via Nairobi to Lake Victoria following the mobile network map - contrasting life on the network to life off it." (http://www.mobileactive.org/mobiles_kenya_bbc)