How Mobile Technology is Advancing in Africa- By Sade Adebayo

First of all, communications are becoming more fluent, allowing people to share information better and faster, whether it is words, images, information or documents. This is certainly improving the quality of both private and professional lives, making them both easier and quicker, connecting people and companies from different states and bringing them closer.

On a business level, mobile technology is enabling Africa to become competitive with the rest of the world, entering markets that were really hard to access before, without any internet connection and such lack of electronic devices. Thanks to this, many locals have started their own small businesses selling their own products getting in contact directly with providers via smartphone rather than having an external enterprise take care of it. For example in Nigeria, a local farmer that buys a used blackberry and is already aware of the price his crops have in the market thanks to Internet, so in this way he will know how much money to expect from retailers. Thanks to this, fair trade is more extended than before, and thus improving the life of many.

The quality of life is increasing exponentially: education, healthcare, transport are all undergoing a great improvement thanks to mobile technology enabling more efficient, better managed and more accessible means while also reducing and important amount of costs. The investment that international companies are making in various parts of Africa in order to boost mobile technology is enormous, especially in Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa or Kenya, and the result is that in 2013 the World Bank estimated that Africa's growth was 5.6% and will of course continue to grow throughout 2014.

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Last but not least, mobile technology is creating an employment sector that was unknown before by locals, which is the Information Technology sector. What is more, some African universities have been teaching an information technology major for years, and they have recently experienced a boost in the past years since it is a very demanded field of studies.