Mobile Telephony: Leveraging Strengths and Opportunities for Socio-Economic Transformation in Nigeria
Mobile Telephony: Leveraging Strengths and Opportunities for Socio-Economic Transformation in Nigeria is a compilation of reports, essays, analysis, interviews, research findings, testimonials and success stories by individuals, organizations and communities.
The book, a report card of Nigeria’s five-year sojourn in mobile telephony documents milestones and challenges as well as opportunities in mobile telephony for socio-economic transformation. An appraisal of the evolution of mobile telephony services in Nigeria, the book emphasises the transformational impact of mobile telephony services on livelihoods and social interactions. In addition, through interviews and analysis of findings, the book explores the vast potential of mobile telephony as a tool for ensuring sustainable livelihoods in rural communities.
Mobile Telephony: Leveraging Strengths and Opportunities for Socio-Economic Transformation in Nigeria further explores the potential of mobile telephony for women’s sustainable livelihoods and socio-econo mic transformation in an increasingly fluid and integrating global economy by taking cognizance of the need to utilize mobile telephony as a tool for integration of the rural woman in Nigeria’s emerging knowledge economy coupled with the need to focus on its socio-economic transformational impact on livelihoods as well as exploring its potential for sustainable livelihoods, especially, amongst Nigeria’s women who fill the bottom rung of the poverty ladder.
The book also ascertains existing knowledge, attitudes and practices of mobile phone users in sourcing pertinent development information and utilizing mobile phones as tools for socio-economic transformation were also ascertained; noting in particular rural women’s challenges in accessing development information for women’s socio-economic empowerment and transformation. Additionally, the book presents a critical awareness of the inherent strengths and opportunities in mobile telephony for socio-economic transformation in rural communities where agriculture, particularly subsistence agriculture is the mainstay of the people and the additional livelihood challenges of rural women’s current limited access to information communication technologies.
Excerpts from the introduction indicate that, ‘this important and seminal work, “Mobile Telephony Leveraging Strengths and Opportunities for Socio-Economic Transformation in Nigeria” seeks to underscore the fact that the Nigerian mobile telephony sector would continue to generate opportunities and strengths that could be leveraged for socio-economic growth for many years to come. It argues that mobile phones possess the capacity for fighting hunger, poverty and social inequities if they are used as ICTs for harnessing and disseminating information. By telling the stories of some ordinary Nigerians who have utilized mobile telephony to escape the poverty trap, the study tries to show that with minimum costs and governmental support such success stories can be multiplied across Nigeria.
For example, it contains the story of a university graduate of accountancy who started a recharge card retail business with just N10, 000 and who later confessed that she has never ‘lacked financially’ ever since. It also runs the story of a palm kernel trader whose operating expenses was reduced by N4, 500 and profits boosted, when she opted to be making calls to her suppliers via a mobile telephone rather than traveling to meet them several kilometers away’.
The study also looked at the challenges faced by telecom operators, some of which include inadequate power supply; tedious customs clearance processes, multiple taxation; lack of fiscal and financial incentives; inappropriate infrastructure support transmission backbone); absence of local manufacture and maintenance capacity as well as the regulatory framework.
In spite of the challenges, the book concludes ‘that encouraging the spread of mobile phones is the most sensible and effective response to the digital divide’, a quotation from the article, ‘The Real Digital Divide’ in The Economist of 12 March 2005. A must read for industry and development stakeholders seeking to expand and consolidate their services, the book further established guiding principles for leveraging the inherent strengths and opportunities in mobile telephony in Nigeria for the socio-economic empowerment and transformation of Nigerians in rural and peri-urban Nigeria.
