"A son wants to talk to his mother in a neighbouring village - it's a two day walk each way."

"A plumber makes house calls all morning only to return to his shop to pick up messages for the afternoon."

"A rural farmer wants to know what crop prices are in the market to see when best to sell his crops - he has to take a day out to visit the market only to find out that the prices are too low midweek."

This was Africa before mobile phones arrived: a lot of walking and not much talking. In the main, fixed line phones were provided by a monopoly provider and were not well resourced or...

Africa wired up provides an important history of how two technologies - mobile calling and internet - were made available to millions of Sub-Saharan Africans and the impact they have had on their lives. The book deals with the political challenges of liberalization and privatization that needed to be in place to get these technologies built. It analyses how the mobile phone fundamentally changed communications in Sub-Saharan Africa and the ways Africans have made these technologies part of their lives. It examines critically the technologies' impact on development practices and the key role...