In areas where net-connected computers are not common, the mobile phone is becoming a vital tool for news

mobilephone

In Africa, mobile phone penetration is higher than electricity penetration. Graphic by Jon Gosier of Appfrica Labs

Thanks to the iPhone and other smart phones, in the western world mobile phones are getting increasingly important for journalism. But in Africa, the phone has been used as a broadcast device for quite a while.

In fact, the use of mobiles in Africa is in many ways ahead of the west.

No need for an app, though, as bandwidth is still rather small. Headlines are simply sent out as text messages, and texting is used to report the news in as well. Although the mobile phone penetration is far behind Europe or Asia, it is rapidly growing. In Africa, four in 10 people now have a mobile phone.

The mobile phone is in some ways the PC of Africa, and creative ways of using it are emerging.

“Apart from radio, mobile phones are a relevant distribution tool for news. Newspapers only matter in urban areas and with policy makers,” says James Mbugua, a business writer at Radio Africa operating in Nairobi who was recently visiting London with a fellowship of the Investment Climate Facility for Africa.

“TV has maybe gained, but newspapers provide the content that they actually talk about. The majority of people is getting their news with radio as it has a lot of reach in rural areas, or with mobile phones. So quite a few of the media houses send out text messages with breaking news, final scores of sport games and stocks.”

Access to the internet is still not common in Africa and high-speed capacity rare. This should be partly tackled by the East African Submarine System, a fibre-optic cable linking 20 African countries, which will go live on June next year. However, as Africa is still a troubled continent, news is important to emigres in the US and the UK: “A couple of newspapers are making money online because they target the diaspora,” says James Mbugua.

As radio waves are sometimes blocked in countries such as Zimbabwe, text messages can be an important news source. For example, the London-based SW Radio Africa that is part of Guardian’s Activate 09 project sends out a selection of headlines to 30,000 people in Zimbabwe via SMS.

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