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Mobile Phones - Africa's silver bullet for the Digital Divide?


Don't get your hopes up...the cell phone has not conquered the Digital Divide as "Mobilility Bridges the Digital Divide: Corante - Moore's Lore" might lead your to believe. The cell phone is demonstrating its ability to conquer/overcome the barriers of infrastructure-heavy, land-line, phone systems. But the conquest is more like what the public telepone system did to the privately held, remotely accessible telegraph. The Digital Divide by most definitions includes access to more than just the connectivity of one-to-one communications available via most cell phones. Cell phone technology may be able to advance communications at a higher rate than traditional systems and it is a great step toward improving connectivity as well as decreasing isolation... but it is but one leg of a three-legged stool in terms of access to information and world-wide technology. When those cell phones include instant access to medical and health information as well as educational, entrepreneurial, governmental, and institutional activity, then I would be more inclined to load the technology arsenal with cell phone ammunition. In the meantime, the ability to make phone calls does not mean the Digital Divide has been conquered.


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