In a nutshell, "Mobile phones offer a lightweight, non-intrusive means of covering communities that are in need of having their stories told. Voices of Africa meets this need by training local citizen journalists to tell the stories of their neighbors and neighborhoods." From what I can tell (I've asked) mobile phones are not really cheaper to use in Africa than they are here. Which means, from my perspective, they're still a really expensive way to transmit information (compared to, say, what internet costs me here). And i wonder sometimes whether all the marketing in favour of cellphones in Africa (and there is a lot, coming from sources like OECD and the World Bank) serves to disguise the extremely high bandwidth charges Africans pay. If you ask me (not that anyone does) internet users where bandwidth is cheap (like, say, here) should be asked to pay a surcharge to ensure that people in under-served areas (such as Africa) are not overcharged for the same service.
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