Uganda grapples with the pros and cons of increased access to mobile phones

Many Africans consider mobile phones a lifeline rather than a luxury, yet for a large number of the rural poor they are still prohibitively expensive to buy and use.

Mobile phone companies have been lobbying governments, including Uganda’s, to cut high mobile phone taxes, which they say inflate prices.

Drive through most towns in Uganda these days and you are greeted by rows of shops and stalls freshly painted in the bright colours of the country’s competing telecoms companies.

This is just one indication of how pervasive the mobile phone has become in the life of Ugandans.

Mobile phone connections have surged in the last decade from 50,000 to 10 million, making Uganda the first African country to have more mobile phones than fixed line connections.

You do not have to look far to see the impact of the mobile on people’s lives.

They are used to send money, to check crop prices, run businesses and keep in touch.

Invested in infrastructure

The country’s six mobile phone operators – MTN, Zain, Uganda Telecom, Warid, Orange and I-Tel – have heavily invested in infrastructure, particularly in rural areas, and directly employ about 350,000 people.

“There is plenty of evidence of how mobile phones have contributed to the economic development of users,” says Dorothy Okello, a lecturer at Makerere University in Kampala, who has spent more than a decade teaching, researching, and conducting information communication technology (ICT) projects across Uganda.

She says using mobiles to transfer money has been a breakthrough for many Ugandans as it eliminates the bureaucracy that clogs financial transactions in the country’s traditional banking sector.

Milton Anyuku, a retail trader in Arua town, some 520 kilometres northwest of Kampala, used to spend around Sh6,000 ($80) on transport, food and accommodation travelling to Kampala to buy shoes, textiles and trimmings for his shop.

Having a mobile phone has dramatically reduced his costs.

“Now all I need is phone credit to make a five-minute call and the wholesaler in Kampala loads my goods onto cargo trucks or the bus and I receive them without any hassle,” he says, smiling.

FoodNet, a post-harvest and marketing research firm, gathers everyday market prices of farm products across the country and uploads the information onto a purpose-built virtual platform.