Also for what it's worth, surveying in much of Africa is incredibly challenging for a variety of reasons. I'd be cautious in trusting it.
On Tue, Aug 16, 2016, 9:23 PM Chris Csikszentmihalyi <robo...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi Arjuna, > > Just a quick note that usage can be quite different across Africa: it's a > big country! [sic]. So by rural; urban; income; gender, phone ownership is > only one aspect of an individual's use strategy. Don't assume that an owned > smart phone is on, charged, or connected to data, indeed it is probably > being used very differently than a North American or European might expect. > > A lot of Africa ICT infographics use ITU figures, which tend to be very > boosterish, citing for instance sim subscriptions rather than the much > smaller number of active users. This works well for the telcos, who want to > look big, and for the ministers of communication, who want to look > "developed." But even if you project active users, these figures can still > be pretty misleading. Many urban professionals will have multiple sim > phones, or simply multiple phones, in order to allow cheaper in-network > calls with friends/colleagues with different providers. How many North > Americans or Europeans use multiple sims every day? I've seen many > journalists and scholars conflate subscriptions with people. > > One way we tried to reconcile the figures with what we saw in the field > was to divide the ITU's reported total of a country's voice minutes by > population. This was back of envelope -- don't cite me and do correct me if > I'm wrong -- but from what we saw in 2012, Kenyans spent an average of 3.5 > minutes per week in a voice call, Ghanaians 3, Nigerians 1. These are most > people's primary phones, and this is average not the median, so given > income distributions it would be safe to imagine that something like 80% of > the population is far lower. In most of the countries I've been to telco > data packages are pretty expensive, and edge/3g/4g networks are worse than > GSM. So in a rural area there may be no data available, but you'll still > see some smart phones. Add to that the problem of charging outside urban > areas, and many users simply carry a powered off phone without credit. In > rural Uganda, where I'm working, when a farmer has to make a call, s/he > travels kilometers to a shop to charge and purchase credits. Why tie up > your money in credits that might devalue? But this strategy means that one > is generally not available for received calls/texts. > > Why have a smart phone if you aren't really connected to data? For > instance, there are big bluetooth/sd card movie/music trading networks. An > Xiao Mina found folks with dubbed martial arts movies that had been passed > by hand for long distances [ > http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/mapping-the-sneakernet/]. Susan Wyche > also wrote about some of the patterns of use in (iirc) Kenya in ""Dead > China-make" phones off the grid: Investigating and designing for mobile > phone use in rural Africa." > > All of which is to say that the Pew figures are probably correct, but > parsing their meaning requires quite a bit of local knowledge. If anyone > can get deeper figures on data usage, background data usage, time powered > on, etc, I'd be excited to see them. > > C. > > -- > Chris Csikszentmihályi > ERA Chair & Scientific Director > Professor > [image: m-itiLogo] <http://www.m-iti.org/> > ------------------------------ > www.m-iti.org | c...@m-iti.org | edgyproduct.org <http://edgyproduct.org> > > * "Art means… to resist the course of a world that unceasingly holds a gun > to mankind's chest." > > --Theodore Adorno* > -- > Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable on Google. Violations > of list guidelines will get you moderated: > https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech. > Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at > compa...@stanford.edu.
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