1. Posted on Monday 10 January 2011 - 11:40

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   Mtheto Lungu

   

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   Mtheto Lungu, AfricaNews reporter in Lilongwe, Malawi

   A research team at the University of Dar es Salaam says half the Tanzanian population is currently hooked to mobile phones, and that it takes just a handset to run a business in the country. Led by Prof Ophelia Mascarenhas of the university, there is no need for offices, visiting cards or huge capital investments.

   

   He is joined by Dr. Raphael Mmasi and Dr. Hezron Makundi of the Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH) in his findings.
   
   The team however remind mobile phone firms to take a more serious approach to mobile banking services, where they argue there is “great potential for ‘banking the unbankable.”
   
   A Tanzania newspaper reported to-date; such opportunity is dwarfed by fun gigs giving people access to the latest ‘music vogues’ or ‘pseudo-gambling’ assets promising millions overnight.
   
   “It is time to address the more serious aspect of the mobile (handset) – through mobile banking … it is of no use to the poor to be able to ask for help if the help in the form of remittance of cash cannot be made because the service is still not available in both the urban and rural areas,” they argue.
   
   In one case, a customer had to travel 35km just to collect an unspecified sum of money sent through M-Pesa, incurring 6,000/- in commuting to the nearest service point.
   
   The Tanzanian study is part of four-nation initiative code-named PICTURE-Africa. The other countries currently doing similar studies are Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda – all financed by Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC).
   
   In Tanzania, COSTECH is playing host. Popularity of the mobile handset has come in large part by a combination of low purchasing prices, from a whopping Tshs. 200,000 down to 20,000/- within a decade and easier access to support services across the urban-rural divide.
   
   In many ways, the study shows a steady ‘replacement’ of the radio set as a first preference as an ICT (information communication technology) tool if a family were to choose between two.
   
   In another development, use of the Internet and e-mail services scored a resounding ‘zero’ with some of the respondents in rural areas reportedly saying they didn’t even know such services existed – and their urban counterparts complaining they were still spread too far between them.
   
   On a positive note, the phone companies have been chasing each other around apparently smarter customers: When Company A promises cheap airtime incentives where you can ‘talk until you snooze’ on the line at wee hours, the customers don’t ditch their old SIM cards from Company B – they simply buy another SIM card to loop-in the ‘talk-until-you-snooze’ kudos, reported the Daily News of Tanzania.
   
   Rural entrepreneurs are particularly happy with the arrival of the mobile handset: One Zainabu Salehe who own a small shop outside the suburban Mlandizi trading centre is quoted as saying she stands to save some Tshs. 250,000 per year in travel costs.
   
   “She uses her mobile phone to contact her customers and business partners (suppliers) as well as to communicate with fellow businesspersons for price updates,” the study says.
   
   Overall, the study illustrates that ICTs, notably the mobile handsets, had since served to reduce poverty “not only in terms of financial poverty but also in increasing capability, facilitating the acquisition of social services, reducing risk and vulnerability and enhancing social inclusion and status.”
   
   On financial poverty impacts, assessment of such benefits was backed with statistical data. “For many of the respondents the benefits such as getting in touch with friends and relatives, getting information on family and reducing risk and vulnerability were equally important,” the researchers argue.
   
   Poverty isn’t just about lack of financial resources “but the sum total of a number of deprivations” – and cite lack of access to new skills, not being able to get in touch with others and learn and share information with others and a feeling of insecurity and isolation.
   
   “Greater access to ICTs reduced these dimensions singly or in two or more dimensions,” the study shows.

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