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.
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.
