Cellphones boost rural development

Once considered a status symbol and the preserve of the urban elite, mobile phones are now changing the lives of rural Zambians. In a country with low telephone connectivity, mobile phones penetrate remote areas that have yet to be connected by landlines. The Communications Authority, which regulates the telecommunications sector, awarded the first licence to Telecel in 1996. Two other companies, Celtel and Cell Z, the trade name for the cellular wing of the parastatal Zambia Telecommunications Company (Zamtel), have since entered the market. Today, mobile phone service providers cover all main transport corridors and provincial centres, and mobile telephones have revolutionised agri-business in Zambia. Guy Robinson, president of the Zambia National Farmers Union (ZNFU) and a commercial farmer in Mazabuka, a farming town 200km south of the capital, Lusaka, said the lack of telecommunications in rural areas had been a hindrance to the development of agriculture. "Finding a market is critical to the farmer. Now I can use the phone to find out prices and get orders. I used to travel to Lusaka for business which can [now] be done over the phone," he said. The benefits of mobile technology have also allowed Alex Dobiso, a farmer in Lunchu village in Kapiri Mposhi, a farming district 200km north of Lusaka, to start supplying cotton to buyers in the mining town of Kabwe. "With the phone I am able to call my clients to find out if payments are ready before travelling. I am also able to call back to the village to supervise work there," he said. "In that way, productivity does not suffer." However, Robinson feels there is room for improvement in the telecommunications sector. "For example, our rates are the highest in the region. We need to improve because the cost of telecommunications is too high in Zambia," he said. Zamtel has a fixed line subscriber base of 87,306 in a population of over 10 million, the majority of whom live in urban or peri-urban areas. The current mobile subscriber base shows that Cell Z has 58,000 subscribers, Telecel 62,000 and Celtel 121,00. "In terms of geographical spread, we are in all nine provinces. We are going to spend US $54 million in expansion in the next 24 months," said Celtel's marketing manager, Chrispine Kagulurah. "People have complained of not having access to telephones, so, in our second phase of rolling out, we will roll out community mobile phones by September to make phones more accessible," he added. The expansion is creating employment in rural areas, as people now have a new source of income selling pay-as-you-go scratch cards and operating payphones, Kagulurah said.