7. Mobile Phone Use in Africa: Implications for Inequality and the Digital Divide

There is growing recognition that the welfare effects of mobile phones—as with other products—need to be based not only on the adoption but also the use of the technology (Sen 1985). What is increasingly being acknowledged is that adoption provides only a part of the true welfare effect because information about the purchase of goods in themselves tells us nothing about how they are actually used (In the extreme case for instance technologies may not be used at all, as when, for example, a bicycle is given to a crippled person) (Sen 1985). The bicycle thus has a positive effect on the GDP but confers no actual utility. In theoretical terms what is being proposed here is a movement away from traditional theory where welfare occurs at the point of purchase to a theory (such as Sen’s functionings approach) which explicitly examines the process after a good is purchased. Methodologically, this transition is effected by means of a detailed data-set for 11 African countries, which describes how mobile phones are used for a variety of mechanisms involving economics, health, social capital and safety (The survey is conducted by the same institution that is indicated in the previous chapter.). These data were also employed in Chap. 6 to analyze use patterns among those countries.