MobileMonday Global

^{Social revolution through mobile communications} How Gambian beggars became mobile SIM vendors

The important thing about mobile communications is not the device or the network, the important thing is the opportunity the phone and the network create, said Jari Tammisto, CEO of MobileMonday on Thursday.

Tammisto was speaking at the Finnish Foreign Ministry event on publishing the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) survey “Information Economy Report 2009: Trends and Outlooks in Turbulent Times".

Janne Rajala, Senior Manager, Nokia Siemens Networks, in his own comments underscored the importance of general liberalization of the markets. Nokia’s surveys have revealed that most of the costs in mobile telephony consist of various kinds of taxes and subscription fees.

MobileMonday has been actively participating in African mobile development. Tammisto emphasized mobile technology as an actual, multi-faceted dynamic force. In the best possible case, it could make e-banking services available to those living in developing countries, enhance the transparency of administration, and facilitate empowering social innovations.

Tammisto thinks that the most important objective is to use ICT for encouraging people towards entrepreneurship, citizenship and participation. Operators in particular should understand to support the actual needs of their customers and enhance their loyalty instead of concentrating on competing with the price alone. In his remarks Tammisto said: “It is important to understand the impact to local cultures, capacity beyond access to ICT usage. We need to understand how the available services are used, how innovation is encouraged and enabled, how the private sector and especially SME’s and micro companies can be supporting agriculture and other the local industries, how the government collaborates with the private sector and what is the role of NGO’s.

“The ICT sector should be viewed as an enabler for other economic sectors, as well as a source of economic growth in and of itself. The ICT sector provides larger opportunities for SMEs in development of applications, in delivering information technology and in business process outsourcing services to other sectors, such as education, health, finance, and agriculture. “For the success, it is vital to nurture entrepreneurs (business and social) via business incubation, open knowledge share, plan competitions, academic-industry R&D, and entrepreneur community networks.” In Tammisto’s view the most important and effective service is bringing the financial services to the community.

Have ID, will do banking

“If we consider the case of Uganda where 6 months ago financial services from banks were only available to 5% of population. The rest of economy is still fully cash based – providing enormous inefficiencies, fraud, gender inequalities like physical abuse. Compare that to Kenya where it is 47% of all money transfers are taking place thru mobile phones.”

“Now the government and private sectors in Uganda have set up a plan where 15 million of the people are brought to the formally managed economy thru combination of central bank approved ID cards and mobile financial services. Imagine the difference in people’s lives where earlier they had to travel on foot long distances to pay in cash for all services. Now they can settle their accounts online.

“The entire economy is transformed. Individual accounts are safe, they ever draw interest, and people can make payments even for international transactions. This is increasingly important, since international remittance is becoming fastest growing source of revenue to many countries. In Uganda the incoming remittances were 650 million us dollars is 2007 and 1.4 billion dollars in 2008.

The implications go far beyond financial services. Right now 75% of African population doesn’t have bankable ID’s. What happens when they get official, transactional ID’s? There will be huge opportunities in healthcare, education and other citizen services. Political processes are also impacted. The manipulation of elections will become a lot harder when the community gains tools to monitor them. Disabled beggar gains income and pride To describe the impact of mobile communications on people’s live, Tammisto quoted a blog entry by MobileMonday activist Tomi Ahonen.

Ahonen wrote about Gambia and how disabled beggars become mobile communication dealers. Gambia is a very tiny country on the Atlantic Ocean side. It has a population of 1.7 million people. The capital is Banjul and the biggest city is Serrekunda, with about 140,000 population. Over 70% of the country is agricultural and the only significant export crop is the peanut. English is the official language and over 90% of the population is Muslim. The GDP per capita is 380 dollars or a dollar per day.

Yet they have mobile telecoms. Even competition in mobile telecoms. The national mobile phone penetration rate is still very low, at only 18%. The one hundred dollar cheap laptop is totally beyond the reach of the average Gambian, it would mean four months of their total income, not four months of their disposable income.

Tomi Ahonen wrote that he has not visited professionally countries as poor as Gambia, and has no first-hand knowledge of their phone markets. He was basing his story on a lunch discussion with Mr Almamy Kassama, the Director of Customer Service at Gamcel, a Gambian mobile operator, in Hong Kong.

“One of the most heart-warming stories he told, was about disabled people who used to be beggars on the streets in the cities of The Gambia. The nation does not have a strong social framework to support those who are disabled, so the disabled had been forced mostly to a life of being a beggar on the streets. They would typically sit in the sunshine all day, asking for a coin or two from passers-by.

“The Gambia has a significant tourist industry especially from English-speaking countries, and it would often be tourists who would then provide most of the money to the beggars. Much due to the specific locations of tourist destinations, and significant other 'good spots' for begging, location-location-location apparently hold even for beggars - the same beggars tended to be in the same locations.

“Gamcel decided to do a little experiment and offer the disabled of The Gambia a chance of part-time employment. They offered the disabled the chance to sell SIM cards, ie mobile phone subscriptions. As part of the 'dealer kit' they offered sun shades, umbrellas, which had the Gamcel logo.

“As a single disabled person, the beggars had no 'power' to ask for support of the local policemen, who would know the disabled persons very well but did not bother to protect them, as they seemed to be at the bottom of the order of power. Gamcel as the big national telecoms company, came to the police department and asked that the police extend their protection to their disabled 'dealership network' and almost overnight, after a few highly publicized arrests and prison sentences, the crime towards the disabled had almost disappeared in the Gambia.

Working – as always – long hours

“As they were accustomed to working long hours begging, these new entrepreneurs were not concerned about working past the official hours and would happily serve their regular clients late into the night if one needed a top-up or a new SIM card etc.

“The disabled of The Gambia then organized into an association, with paying dues, and now offer a basic social services care system, such as assisting with the costs of death and burial, if one of their members dies, etc. “Through this type of micro-employment these disabled people rose above the national average in income, earning far more than a dollar per day, out of their commissions with Gamcel SIM cards and top-ups. They also had now the sunscreens, the umbrellas, that they would never have afforded to buy from the income of their begging.

“These disabled also now can afford to be connected, they have their own phones and they can serve their customers even more. And when their own sister or brother or parent or child has a special day, a birth day, etc, they can call and congratulate, and even afford to save a little bit of money to buy a gift.

“But most of all, these former beggars have gained employment, and a true sense of achievement and accomplishment. Pride in their lives.”

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