Mobile Phones, Popular Media, and Everyday African Democracy: Transmissions and Transgressions

Assessing the diffusion and use of mobile payment solutions: A case of South African townships

“…South Africa has a smart phone penetration rate of 54% (FinScope, 2014). Due to the low level of income amongst township residents, they are generally on the prepaid packages and the mobile phones are generally used to receive rather than to make calls (Wasserman, 2011).…”

Mainstreaming African digital cultures, practices and emerging forms of citizen engagement

“…The interactions have broken deep-seated political barriers, and the traditional culture of fear associated with publicly challenging and confronting the political elite has been deflated, albeit in dispersed digital spaces. Equally, civil society institutions and special interest groups are galvanising and increasingly devoting more time and resources to virtual deliberative forums (Mare 2014;Wasserman 2011;Willems 2015).…”

“…The unprecedented diffusion and pervasiveness of the mobile phone across social classes in Africa remains one of the most significant exemplars of the impact of digital technologies on the continent (Moyo 2009;Wasserman 2011). It has proved 'critical in shaping everyday life far more than the Internet, which has represented the most widely discussed and perhaps most significant manifestation of the new media' (Mabweazara 2011, 693) across the globe.…”

“…Likewise, the phenomenon of mobile phone cash transfers has had an unimaginable impact in Africa -mobile phones have literally become 'banking halls' and 'wallets' for individuals who do not have bank accounts or those who choose to use alternative financial services. Across East Africa, which has taken the lead in this regard, the mobile phone transacts more money than banks on a daily basis, thus facilitating positive socioeconomic transformation (Etzo and Collender 2010;Wasserman 2011). It is not surprising, therefore, that the rapid adoption of the technology and its dramatic benefits in Africa 'have frequently been described in unrestrained terms as "staggering", a "remarkable" phenomenon, and a "revolution"' (Etzo and Collender 2010, 659).…”

“…While the mobile phone's impact in Africa is largely a result of its widespread accessibility, relative to other communication technologies such as the fixedline telephone, which remains a pipe dream in many parts of Africa (Wasserman 2011), some scholars point to its amenability to local cultural values of sociality, interdependence and conviviality (Nyamnjoh 2005), which make it possible for those who cannot afford to acquire their own, to access mobile phone services without much difficulty. These local cultural values also engender localised appropriations that, on close examination, find no parallels in Western contexts (De Bruijn, Brinkman and Nyamnjoh 2009;Mabweazara 2011).…”