Jonathan Donner
Blurring Livelihoods and Lives
The Social Uses of Mobile Phones and
Socioeconomic Development
Consider your own mobile phone use over the last 24 hours. Recall the family pho-
tos you might have set to appear as caller ID, the ringtone you have chosen, et le
bookmarks or applets you may use to check everything from sports scores to
movie times. But mainly, just think of the basic flow of incoming and outgoing
calls; chances are, you may have used your handset to call a colleague one moment
and your mother the next. Even if you haven’t made any calls today, your phone is
probably on, waiting patiently to connect you to the office, to students, to friends,
or to family.
As technologies go, mobile phones are quite flexible. GSM and CDMA net-
works provide coverage to homes, to workplaces, even to the wilderness. Personnes
carry handsets with them as they move from place to place and between social sit-
situations. By enabling and strengthening social and economic relationships at a dis-
tance, mobiles shift time and place, and complicate contexts and roles to an even
greater degree than the landlines that preceded them. Carrying a mobile invites
consideration or even reconfiguration of being “at work,”“in transit,”“at home,” or
“at play.” 1 Mobiles blur the lines between livelihoods and lives, and not just among
smartphone-wielding information workers. Plutôt, this blurring can be experi-
enced by almost anyone engaged with work. Around the world, farmers and fish-
ermen, artisans and day laborers, community health workers and primary school
teachers are carrying handsets and using them for both productive and personal
uses throughout their daily routines.
This paper focuses on how this intermingling of lives and livelihoods, as medi-
ated by the mobile phone, figures into the micro-processes of economic develop-
ment. It neither broadly elaborates the core contributions of mobile phone use to
développement économique (synchronizing prices, expanding markets, reducing trans-
port costs, etc.), nor suggests that one kind of mobile use is more important than
another. Plutôt, it argues simply for a perspective on work and on livelihoods that
is broad enough to account for (and perhaps even take advantage of) le social
processes surrounding these activities. Analysts, policymakers, and technologists
Jonathan Donner is a Researcher (Technology for Emerging Markets) with Microsoft
Research India.
© 2009 Jonathan Donner
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interested in the application of Mobiles for Development (M4D) should not
ignore the way mobiles blur livelihoods and lives; the developmental and non-
developmental uses of the mobile are not in competition, nor are they always dis-
tinguishable. Plutôt, the uses of mobiles for developmental and non-developmen-
tal purposes are often interrelated and sometimes mutually reinforcing. The social
functions of the mobile (in matters of connection and self-expression) are helping
drive its widespread adoption, and these same functions inform the very behaviors
that make the mobile a tool for economic development.
MOBILES BLUR BOUNDARIES BETWEEN LIVES AND LIVELIHOODS
Like the landline telephone, mobiles offer connectivity at a distance. By replacing
travel, reducing isolation, improving coordination of economic activity, et
improving market efficiency, connectivity contributes to productivity and, là-
fore, to GNP per capita.2 Some of the best mobile-specific evidence for this comes
from studies by Jenson and Aker,3 who illustrate how mobiles improve the efficien-
cy of markets, enforce the law of one price, reduce waste, and increase productivi-
ty. In specific domains, the mobile is proving to be a promising platform for high-
er-order applications, such as the M-PESA for m-payments and Cell-Life for m-
health.4 Both systems, and numerous others like them, are mobile applications
designed to support instrumental, productive, and essential activities, and each has
been lauded for its contribution to socioeconomic development.
Cependant, mobiles are not always viewed or used by individuals in such exclu-
sively instrumental ways—even when they are using these same applications. Par
examining the mix of calls made by individuals, the content of those calls, et le
distribution and use of mobiles in a community, we can see the pervasiveness of
the social and non-instrumental uses of the mobile phone and the ways in which
these other uses affect the receptivity to and use of M4D-related applications.
The easiest place to observe this blurring of lives and livelihoods is at the level
of the call mix. Few individuals make exclusively business or workplace-related
calls on their mobile. Par exemple, a survey of the call logs of 277 operators of
micro and small enterprises (MSEs) in Rwanda found that roughly one third of the
total calls and text massages (incoming and outgoing) were business related. Le
rest of the calls were chitchat or other interactions with friends and family.5 Similar
études, with payphones (not mobiles) in rural contexts in Africa and India, trouvé
similar skews toward personal calls, rather than business or commerce distribu-
tions.6
Since people carry mobiles from place to place and since mobiles are almost
always on, placing us and our contacts just a few key presses away, we have become
increasingly able and willing to conduct business from home, take a personal call
at work, and to multitask while in transit from one place to another. Richard Ling
described how these shifts in availability and reachability lead both to micro-coor-
dination (a natural flow toward coinciding actions between geographically distant
actors) and to a finer interlacing of various conversations, goals, and activities dur-
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Blurring Livelihoods and Lives
ing the moments of one’s day.7 All these properties of mobile communication blur
lives and livelihoods, yet none are cutting edge—each is facilitated as easily by a
$10 used handset bought in market in Dhaka as by a $500 smartphone purchased
in an upscale electronics boutique.
It can also be difficult to differentiate an economic call from a social one.8
Conversations between longstanding clients may often be to check in and build
rapport, trust and social capital rather than to transact any discrete business9. Dans
some ways, the mobile may do more to amplify existing transactional relationships
than to generate new ones.
In many countries where landlines are relatively scarce, mobile handsets pull
double-duty and are carried between the home and the workplace. For the self-
employed, this may not be particularly problematic; cependant, for workers, si
in the private sector, in NGOs, or government, this transportability can lead to dif-
ficulties of compensation for airtime and hardware. Par exemple, Nigerian doc-
tors, in the absence of a voicemail system, have been observed using personal
mobiles not only to respond when offsite but also when inside their hospital.10
Inversement, midwifes in Aceh, Indonésie, take their NGO- and donor-supplied
mobiles home at night, using them for personal as well as professional purposes.11
The three cases above (mixed and interlaced personal and professional calls,
complex content, and double-duty hardware/airtime) illustrate the difficulties of
drawing a sharp line between using the phone for lives and for livelihoods at an
individual level. It is even more difficult at broader levels, such as in families and
communautés. Par exemple, it is all too common for family members to live in sep-
arate locations, sometimes for years at a time, in the pursuit of better economic
conditions. Seamen, miners, domestic helpers, migrant workers, and other mem-
bers of the world’s global economic diasporas turn increasingly to mobile phones
in order to keep in touch with loved ones. In some cases, family members who have
left a village purchase mobiles for the family members who stay behind.12 The
mobile phone allows the conduct of family life at a distance—and the line between
a call about economic matters versus one brought on by economic circumstances
and choices is thin indeed.13
In some places, the web of intertwined economic and social relationships
extends beyond families. Horst and Miller describe “link up” in Jamaica, dans lequel
people use their mobiles to maintain social ties, which can be tapped, on occasion,
for loans or small grants. Suggesting that “there is no new spirit of enterprise based
either the cell phone or the internet,” they found link-up behaviors more common
among low-income homes in Jamaica than entrepreneurial activities mediated by
the phones (p. 164). Nevertheless, the mobile is at the heart of economic survival
for those households. By allowing individuals to leverage broad interlocking net-
works of informal social and financial support, “the phone is not very central to
making money, but is vital to getting money” (p 165).14
Taken as a whole, these examples underscore that the blurring of contexts and
goals is an essential property of mobile communication,15 a reflection of how the
technology directly connects people (not places), and allows them to draw com-
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plex interactions between personal and productive activities. En effet, taking a long-
voir, this turn of events may erode the more arbitrary divisions between home and
workplace brought about (at least in part) by landline telephones.16
M4D AND THE BLUR
There is a growing and enthusiastic discussion between policymakers, practition-
ers, and researchers about the role of mobile phones in economic development.
The blurring of lives and livelihoods described above isn’t the lead story in these
discussions—nor should it be—nevertheless, the blur merits more attention. Le
second half of this paper reviews three current challenges facing the M4D commu-
nity—assessing impact, connecting the unconnected, and integrating data and
applications—and considers the implications of the blur for each. In each case, le
mobile’s new models of ownership/control (shared, personal) and of temporality
(portability) combine to create challenges and opportunities for M4D.
Assessing impact
An ongoing challenge to M4D research and practice is to continue building a body
of knowledge about what works and what does not, and to elaborate on the
processes through which mobile use has impacts (positive and negative) on socio-
développement économique. The M4D discussion, like the broader ICTD discussion,
requires evidence to guide and prioritize policy and investment. The M4D com-
munity has begun assembling this evidence, both by tapping into existing threads
of research about landlines and by generating new research focused specifically on
mobiles. Seminal studies, like Jenson’s work with Keralan fishermen, have begun to
make a strong case for how mobiles contribute to productivity and improve the
functionality of markets.17
As a complement to econometric designs, it is important to conduct research
that is sensitive to the lives/livelihoods blurs in everyday mobile use. Accounting
for the blurs can help researchers identify additional paths to productivity
enhancement and positive returns from mobile use. Some of this research will iso-
late the relative impact of connectivity (which mobiles share with landlines) et
mobility (which they generally do not). It is the anytime/anywhere mobility that
underpins most of the “blurring” discussed in this paper. Cependant, so far, little
M4D research hasdistinguished between the mobility and connectivity benefits of
the mobile. Put another way, in terms of common livelihoods in the developing
monde, we know that craftpersons (or fishermen, or roaming commodities middle-
men, or farmers) are more productive with mobiles than with no phone at all,18 mais
we have not yet determined whether they are any more productive than they would
be if they had landlines instead.
At the level of individual economic activity, models and measurement can
account for how mobiles help improve response time, reachability, and trust, même
beyond what the connectivity of landlines provides. Even simple matters like
enabling lunch breaks for micro-enterprises can have a large impact on their over-
all productivity. These second order effects include new spatial and social configu-
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Blurring Livelihoods and Lives
rations, which are only beginning to be understood—the arrival of the “real-time
city,” fueled by micro-coordination,19 may create many opportunities for con-
sumers and producers to interact more quickly, intelligently, and productively. Le
calls, which underpin this quickening, are a mix of social and transactional. Même
non-calls might matter, as reachability itself (social presence at a distance) can play
a role in determining people’s choices about how to conduct their day, such as
when fishermen describe the peace of mind of increased contact with their fami-
lies onshore as one benefit of mobile ownership2.0
But there is a second level to this. Quite simply, social calls matter too. Pour
every business-related call (to check prices, place an order, dispatch a delivery
truck, etc.), there is another call that is not clearly business-related. The mobile is
a social tool of self-expression, of family coordination, of chatter, and of “the
everyday.” Of course, for the most part, no one would disagree—what’s wrong with
a social call?—but in the emerging domain of M4D (and ICT4D more generally),
there is an undercurrent of concern that some individuals are spending too much
on “unnecessary” mobile phones and airtime. This perspective, summarized by
(but not endorsed) by Richard Heeks in a recent post,21 indicates an implicit (ou
explicit) higher value some observers place on calls that return income or other
improvements to health, éducation, and safety. Encore, if we instead consider the will-
ingness to pay exhibited by mobile users worldwide, the same relatively high
expenditures of concern to some observers can be interpreted as indications of the
high value to end-users of social calls, self-expression, and even entertainment.
En effet, some users might be better off spending less on airtime, ringtones, et
premium SMS entertainment, but some M4D researchers might also be better off
coming up with broader measurements for quality of life instead of simply return
on investment.
Connecting the unconnected
Whatever one’s assessment of the value of social calls to end-users, there is enough
evidence linking mobile use to productivity and economic development to bring
us to a second topic in M4D research, the questions of access and affordability. À
least 80 percent of the world population has access to a mobile signal, and there are
four billion mobile subscriptions in the world.22 Yet, basic access to mobile com-
munications remains elusive to some because mobile adoption has followed the
well-trod patterns of technology diffusion. Granted, there are prosperous people
who chose not to purchase a handset; others get by sharing handsets with family
and friends. Income matters; mobile ownership is lower among the bottom billion,
those living often (but not exclusively) in the world’s poorest nations, and those
earning a dollar or two a day.23;24 This bottom billion is the focus of much of the
efforts of the M4D community, who see bi-directionality and interdependencies
between economic scarcity and mobile use. Lower levels of mobile adoption are
reflections of economic constraints or physical isolation, but for many in the devel-
opment discussion, encouraging higher rates of adoption has become a priority,
one factor/lever which could contribute to socioeconomic development.
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One rather difficult path in the access/affordability discussion is the suggestion
that since there are community-level benefits in higher levels of mobile use, non-
users should be encouraged or incented to use a mobile, regardless of their indi-
vidual desires. It is far easier to assert that there are still people in the world who
want a mobile but can’t afford or access one. Until the cost of mobile use drops
below a level they are willing or able to pay (a level that assumes some combina-
tion of hardware and access/airtime/usage charges), they remain non-users. Le
efforts of the GSMA to develop inexpensive handsets have been useful here, as have
the normal pressures of growing competitive markets. Economies of scale, rapid
innovation, and thoughtful allocation of the mobile spectrum have placed gener-
ally downward pressures on the costs of handsets and network usage for end-users.
Mais, for the bottom billion, even the investment of $10 for a used handset and $2
per month in airtime represents a considerable and perhaps prohibitive sum.
At this stage, the link back to the livelihoods/lives blur becomes clear. Since
many people place a high value on the personal and social benefits of mobile use
(entertainment, social connection, self-expression, chit-chat), their actual willing-
ness to pay is higher than would be expressed for the purely instrumental and
transactional elements of mobile telephony, which are traditionally the focus of the
M4D community. Echoing the point made above, that “social calls matter too,»
how can we ignore the value of social calls when evaluating the drivers of demand?
Put another way, though people might be willing to adopt a mobile and to use it
in ways which eventually will be beneficial to them in a “development” sense, mais
the reasons many of them will do so will likely have little to do with these develop-
ment outcomes. If mobiles were not so enjoyable, fewer people among the poorer
half of the world would be willing to purchase them, and putting mobiles in the
hands of current non-users for developmental purposes would be a more difficult
and expensive proposition.
The blur reveals a related issue in problematic models that equate individuals
with users. Families, even extended ones, share the costs of handsets. People can
share airtime, sending it instantaneously from one phone to another. Et, through
missed calls and “please call me” messages, families and other call partners can
redistribute the costs of phone calls towards those most able to pay.25 Again, le
landscape of expenditures on mobiles (which may be used for all kinds of devel-
opmental and instrumental reasons down the line) can only be understood by fac-
toring in social connections.
Expanding beyond voice calls and SMS
The first wave of mobile use, centered on voice calls and P2P SMS messages, a
swept the world. But a second movement is, bien sûr, underway. The M4D com-
munity sees great promise in mobile-based applications and, particularly, in the
mobile Internet. In the short run, questions persist about the forms these applica-
tions will take.
M-banking and m-payments systems, such as M-PESA in Kenya and WIZZIT
in South Africa, are among the most exciting applications: they are surprisingly
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Blurring Livelihoods and Lives
simple, often using SMS or other basic interfaces, and they have demonstrated
broad appeal, even among traditionally “unbanked” populations. In Kenya, at least
four million accounts have been registered by M-PESA in its first two years of
operation, a number that is rapidly approaching equivalence to the number of for-
mal bank accounts in the country.26 And yet, here too, the lives/livelihoods blur
helps both constrain and drive the use of these systems. Among the unbanked,
early research suggests that most transactions are between family members—
domestic remittances rather than commercial transactions. This is not to say that
the M-PESA services, and others like it, are not supporting better commercial
activité; cependant, the success and appeal of m-payments systems among the
unbanked cannot be described without accounting for the importance of person-
al and family connections.
A second issue is the uptake of Internet applications. GPRS, Edge, and even 3G
data services, all previously restricted to high-end handsets and wealthy users, sont
making steady inroads into mid-tier phones across the developing world. Some
GPRS phones with basic browsers were priced below $75 in India in late 2008, et,
bien sûr, secondhand handsets could be found for even less money. The develop-
ment community is taking notice, Par exemple, via the W3C consortium’s “Mobile
web for social development” initiative.27 No definitive census of the range and
number of M4D applications which make use of data services is currently avail-
capable, but among presentations at the recent MobileActive08 conference in
Johannesbourg, voice and SMS-based systems outnumbered GPRS or other data
based systems.28 Nevertheless, mobile Internet applications, such as South Africa’s
MXit and Facebook, are strong draws for first-time mobile Internet users; le
hooks are entertainment, social networking, and self-expression. During ongoing
exploratory interviews in South Africa, we spoke with individuals, some with no
previous exposure to PC-based Internet browsers or applications, who began
browsing the Internet via their phones after seeing advertisements with a URL or
in order to check football (soccer) scores.29
The importance of the lives/livelihoods blur in this case is that in both the
MXit/Facebook/Mobile Internet and mobile-banking examples, users are becom-
ing exposed to (and comfortable with) platforms and broad behaviors with roots
in social behaviors, which later can be used for transactional and “productive”
activities of interest to the economic development community. Configuring
mobile Internet settings remains remarkably challenging on many phones and net-
travaux. It will be easier to drive people to development-related content and appli-
cations on platforms like MXit or Facebook if those people have already gotten
over the configuration hurdles thanks to motivation from a favorite cricket team
or inexpensive social chat.
For those of us interested in designing or modifying mobile applications for
socioeconomic development, the implications and relative importance of the
DISCUSSION
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lives/livelihoods blur depend on the context and goals of the application and
accompanying intervention. That said, a few generalizable lessons could be drawn:
• Who uses it? The application, as deployed, will probably “slip” or “jump” outside
of its original intended context. In a physical sense, this means that handsets will
travel with respondents from workplace to home, or outside of the original cov-
erage range of the intervention. (Par exemple, during the development of a
mobile-based information system for agricultural cooperatives, an analysis of the
server logs found individuals, who were not originally recruited to the pilot, dial-
ing in to the system to issue queries.30 Mobile behaviors and innovations are eas-
ily shared. In a contextual sense, aussi, the application may shift. Before the intro-
duction of M-PESA, researchers had already found examples of users who had
adapted airtime sharing as a form of barter or money transfer, an unintended
(and contextually distinct) activity.31 More recently, other mobile social applica-
tion, like Twitter, have played a role in conveying important real-time updates
concerning the most serious of matters, such as terrorist attacks and elections.32
• Who pays for it? The right parties have to pay for the ongoing airtime and net-
work charges, but discerning the correct ongoing usage model can be difficult.
For sponsored/workplace programs, administrators will be faced with the
prospects of either subsidizing personal activities, “locking up” the phones at
night, or placing the onus on end-users to pay out of pocket for their develop-
ment-related activities. De la même manière, in the case of m-Internet applications, getting
individuals to pay on a per-bit basis to visit development-related websites or use
development-related mobile applications will depend on either a remarkably
clear demonstration of value to end-users, a reasonable form of subsidy or com-
pensation, or both. In some cases, redistributive strategies, like “please call me
messages” or intentionally missed calls, can shift the burden to the proper party.
• When and how? A development application residing on or accessed via a mobile
phone constantly has to share the limelight with the phone’s connection, enter-
tainment, and self-expression functions. It must compete for attention and util-
ity with not only other development-related activities, but with calls to mom,
ringtones, and BBC news sports scores. Your users likely learned their mobile
skills pursuing these expression and entertainment functions, and they may eval-
uate your application by similar standards … does your public health reporting
tool look as sharp and run as smoothly as that downloadable game?
En résumé, it is worth considering both the unanticipated social uses of your
application, as well as the ways in which social forces and context will enable and
constrain its use. More broadly, these generalizable issues reflect an emerging
theme in M4D applications (et, en effet, in ICTD more generally).33 Mobiles
enhance and broaden social networks and are, thus, a natural environment for
applications reflecting a “Web 2.0” logic of collaborative endeavors, P2P activity,
and producer/consumers.34 And yet, much of traditional development communi-
cation has relied on top-down paradigms of information transfer and persuasion.
A challenge, donc, is to draw from the best mobile innovations from outside
the M4D sector without letting the older top-down/transmission/transfer logics
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Blurring Livelihoods and Lives
prevail. Ainsi, if an M4D application is “about” delivering information, it is worth
exploring how it enables collaborative action. If it is about promoting behaviors in
the form of reminders, consider how it provides support or reassurance; if it is
about linking buyers and sellers, consider how it can help support and create trust-
ed relationships.
Looking at it in these terms, the blur of lives and livelihoods presents not just
challenges, but also great opportunities for M4D application developers. Mobiles
are approachable and accessible without lacking caché. The increasing appeal of
advanced services (albeit about social networking, entertainment, and self-expres-
sion) means that a broad range of potential users may give an M4D application the
benefit of the doubt not afforded to PC/kiosk-based applications. This makes it
easier to train users on complex systems, such as data-gathering tools. Mass-appeal
applications, such as job information sites, virtual marketplaces, or public health
educational content, can be viable and scalable, even if they are used only fraction-
ally or occasionally by broad populations. There is a world of possibilities when the
right M4D platforms are already in the hands of target populations.
For researchers and policymakers, it must be reiterated that the point is not to
abandon efforts to elaborate and quantify the impact of mobiles on prices and pro-
ductivity—the stuff of markets and of economic development. Plutôt, the impor-
tance is to ensure that the ways in which the mobile blurs lives and livelihoods are
accounted for in these efforts. Expanding the lens to include micro-coordination,
interlacing, and other mobile-specific properties will help differentiate the impacts
of mobiles from those of fixed lines, and will probably uncover stronger and new
forms of economic advantage. Thinking back to Overa’s work with traders in
Ghana, the mobile’s role in trust-building and increased availability was nearly as
important to traders as setting prices or volumes via mobile phone.
Enfin, the blurring concept is important for those interested in placing the
M4D enthusiasm into a broader context of global changes. Structurally, this is a
major turning point for the world. The burst of connectivity in the developing
world during the decade of 2001-2010 has made telecommunications accessible
for half the world. This promises to change the configuration of people to each
other and to the formal/global economy, which has excluded so many of them. Il
is going to do so in ways that are tied to social locations as much (if not more) comme
to economic transactions. Symbolically, blurring reflects and drives societal beliefs
about the mobile. The telephone helped shape the economic landscape of the 20th
siècle, reflecting and reinforcing some locations in economic and production
réseaux, while excluding others. Widespread mobile use promises to reduce that
exclusion.35 Yet, for individual users, the mobile it is not merely a symbol of eco-
nomic development or productivity. Plutôt, it is one of self-expression, agency,
and social connection as well. Even when, as M4D researchers, policymakers, et
technologists, our goals are to elaborate and promote the former, we cannot afford
to ignore the latter.
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Jonathan Donner
1. Cheryl Geisler and Annis Golden, “Mobile Technologies at the Boundary of Work and Life,»
http://www.rpi.edu/~geislc/Manuscripts/Mobile.pdf.
2. R.J. Saunders, J.J. Warford, et B. Wellenieus, Telecommunications and Economic Development, 2
éd. (Baltimore, MARYLAND: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994). Leonard Waverman, Meloria
Meschi, and Melvyn Fuss, “The Impact of Telecoms on Economic Growth in Developing
Nations,” Moving the Debate Forward: The Vodafone Policy Paper Series #3,
3. Jenny C. Aker, “Does Digital Divide or Provide? The Impact of Cell Phones on Grain Markets in
Niger,» (Berkeley: University of California, 2008). Robert Jensen, “The Digital Provide:
Information (Technologie), Market Performance, and Welfare in the South Indian Fisheries
Sector,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 122(3) (2007).
4. Nick Hughes and Susie Lonie, “M-Pesa: Mobile Money for The ‘Unbanked’; Turning Cellphones
into 24-Hour Tellers in Kenya,” Innovations 2(1-2) (2007). http://www.cell-life.org.
5. Jonathan Donner, “The Use of Mobile Phones by Microentrepreneurs in Kigali, Rwanda: Changes
to Social and Business Networks “ Information Technologies and International Development, 3(2)
(2006).
6. Souter and his colleagues elaborate: “There is little evidence in the survey data that telephony has
helped respondents increase their financial capital, whether through improved access to financial
services or through more efficient and profitable businesses operations … even among those who
have invested in acquiring a telephone, only around one in three feels that it has benefited her/his
financial activities.” (p. 121) “However, the telephone is an important business tool for a minori-
ty of respondents who make more intensive use of it. This is seen clearly in the India study, pour
example, where the impact on better market process is not considered important by the sample as
a whole but is highly valued by intensive users” (p. 122). David Souter et al., “The Economic
Impact of Telecommunications on Rural Livelihoods and Poverty Reduction: A Study or Rural
Communities
and Tanzania,” Commonwealth
Telecommunications Organisation for UK Department for International Development,,
http://www.telafrica.org/R8347/files/pdfs/FinalReport.pdf.
(Gujarat), Mozambique,
India
dans
7. Richard Ling and Birgitte Yttri, “Hyper-Coordination Via Mobile Phones in Norway,” in Perpetual
Contact: Mobile Communication, Private Talk, Public Performance, éd. James E. Katz and Mark A.
Aakhus (Cambridge, ROYAUME-UNI: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Rich Ling and Jonathan Donner,
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8. Jonathan Donner, “The Mobile Behaviors of Kigali’s Microentrepreneurs: Whom They Call…Et
Why,” in A Sense of Place: The Global and the Local in Mobile Communication, éd. Kristóf Nyíri
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10. Bayo Idowu, Eyitope Ogunbodede, and Bimbo Idowu, “Information and Communication
Technology in Nigeria: The Health Sector Experience,” Journal of Information Technology Impact
3, Non. 2 (2003).
11. Arul Chib et al., “Midwives and Mobiles: Using ICTs to Improve Healthcare in Aceh Besar,
Indonésie,” Asian Journal of Communication 18, Non. 4 (2008).
12. Serigne Mansour Tall, “Senegalese Émigrés: New Information and Communication
Technologies,” Review of African Political Economy 31, Non. 99 (2004).
13. Andrew Skuse and Thomas Cousins, “Rural Poverty and the Promise of Communication in Post-
Apartheid South Africa,” Journal of Asian and African Studies 42(2) (2007).
14. Heather Horst and Daniel Miller, The Cell Phone: An Anthropology of Communication (Oxford:
Berger, 2006), Skuse and Cousins, “Rural Poverty and the Promise of Communication in Post-
Apartheid South Africa.”
15. James E. Katz and Mark Aakhus, “Conclusion: Making Meaning of Mobiles—a Theory of
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16. Ithiel de Sola Pool, éd., The Social Impact of the Telephone (Cambridge, MA: AVEC Presse, 1977).
17. Saunders, Warford, and Wellenieus, Telecommunications and Economic Development. Waverman,
Meschi, and Fuss, “The Impact of Telecoms on Economic Growth in Developing Nations.”
Jensen, “The Digital Provide: Information (Technologie), Market Performance, and Welfare in
the South Indian Fisheries Sector.”
18. Overå, “Networks, Distance, and Trust: Telecommunications Development and Changing
Trading Practices in Ghana.” Hsain Ilahiane and John Sherry, “Mobile Phones, Globalization,
and Economic Productivity in Urban Morocco,” in Annual Meeting of the Society for Applied
Anthropology (Santa Fe: 2005). Jensen, “The Digital Provide: Information (Technologie), Market
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19. Ling and Yttri, “Hyper-Coordination Via Mobile Phones in Norway.” Anthony M. Townsend,
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20. Reuben Abraham, “Mobile Phones and Economic Development: Evidence from the Fishing
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21. Richard Heeks, “Mobiles for Impoverishment?,” in ICTs for Development Blog (2008).
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23. Everett M. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations, 5 éd. (New York: The Free Press, 2003).
24. P.. Colllier, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done
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Ltd.,
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27. http://www.w3.org/2008/MW4D/.
28. Jonathan Donner, Katrin Verclas, and Kentaro Toyama, “Reflections on Mobileactive08 and the
M4d Landscape,” in First International Conference on M4D (Karlstad, Sweden: 2008).
29. Interviews conducted by Shikoh Gitau, University of Cape Town.
30. Rajesh Veeraraghavan, Naga Yasodhar, and Kentaro Toyama, “Warana Unwired: Mobile Phones
Replacing PCs in a Rural Sugarcane Cooperative” (paper presented at the 2nd IEEE/ACM
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31. Malcolm Ray,
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32. Beth E. Kolko, Emma J. Rose, and Erica J. Johnson, “Communication as Information-Seeking:
The Case for Mobile Social Software for Developing Regions “ (paper presented at the 16th
international conference on the World Wide Web (WWW), Banff, Alberta, Canada 2007).
33. Richard Heeks, “Ict4d 2.0: The Next Phase of Applying ICT for International Development “
Computer 41(6_)(2008).
34. Tim O’Reilly, “What Is Web 2.0,”
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35. Jonathan Donner, “Shrinking Fourth World? Mobiles, Développement, and Inclusion,” in
Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, éd. James Katz (Cambridge, MA: AVEC Presse, 2008).
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