The news that mobile phone use in Africa has surpassed the 900 million mark is a welcome development on a continent that is better known for all the wrong reasons. The better news however, is that most of the users are not idling away on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram but they are busy improving their businesses through ‘smartphone technology’.
According to a survey dubbed Ericsson Mobility Report for 2015, “most of the mobile users are now walking around with powerful smartphones that give them access to applications and information to enhance their businesses.”
In fact the report emphasizes that today an employee can deliver results in real time using a tablet/smartphone and working from anywhere in the world.
It is important to note that over the last twenty years the mobile phone has ‘revolutionalised’ the way we carry out most of our day-to-day activities, making the small, portable gadgets an integral part of our daily life. Indeed, the gadget has brought us in close contact with technology, and in the process helped us in advancing our thought processes, to ease work.
Not surprisingly therefore, these days it is not uncommon for one to come across university students of Information Communication Technology (ICT) and Computer Engineering coming up with applications that have over time, managed to change the lives of people engaged in farming and agriculture, health and finance, among other undertakings.
So, given its cross-cutting nature, technology should now be placed at the centre of our country’s strategic planning. We can start by introducing computer use to pupils in lower primary school. This is not rocket science, Kenya is doing it and we can borrow a few lessons from our eastern neighbor because the benefits of such a development are immense.
Then secondly, we can introduce ‘internet bars’ in the rural areas where youthful villagers can go and learn how to operate the applications that facilitate agriculture. If this is done government will not have only empowered the rural youth but will also have helped scale down rural-urban migration.
