Africa 2.0 – Inside a Continent’s Communications Revolution – is out now from Manchester University Press.
It’s an ambitious 35 year history of the impact of mobile and internet on Sub-Saharan Africa written for the informed general reader. Chapters cover: the rise of mobile calling; bandwidth as the digital economy’s fuel; mobile internet, handsets and apps; mobile money; African digital life; digital’s impact on development;industry corruption, start-ups addressing deep market challenges and doing complexity: making sense of what happened.
The author : Russell Southwood is the Founder and CEO of the consultancy and research practice, Balancing Act, which has focused on telecoms, internet and media in Sub-Saharan Africa over the last 20 years. He is also the author of Less Walk, More Talk – How Celtel and the Mobile Phone Changed Africa and with Kelly Wong, Building a Data Ecosystem for Food Security and Sustainability, Agtech V3.0.
READ: Balancing Act [allAfrica Archive]
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Africa 2.0 – Inside a Continent’s Communications Revolutio
Contents
Introduction
Part I Technology diffusion – The spread of mobile calling and internet
Prologue
1 Mobile voice calling booms
2 Bandwidth as the digital economy’s fuel – getting Sub-Saharan Africa connected
3 Cheaper mobile internet and low-cost smartphones come together with apps Sub-Saharan Africans want to use
Part II Technology influences – Uses, behaviours and abuses
4 Mobile money – from transferring cash to a digital payments ecosystem
5 Sub-Saharan Africans start to live the digital life
6 Sprinkling on the magic dust – Digital’s impact on development
7 The ugly underbelly of the communications revolutions – corruption, cronyism, regulation and government
Part III Taking the long view – Start-up innovation and complex behaviour change
8 Sub-Saharan African start-ups – getting beyond the hype to address deep market challenges
9 Doing complexity – Making sense of what has happened over 30 years
Appendix A: Glossary
Appendix B: Select bibliography
Appendix C: List of those interviewed