Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates informal youth businesses in the mobile telephony sector and the extent to which business in the mobile telephony sector is influencing transition to adulthood among the youth in the city of Accra.

Paper long abstract:

Liberalisation of the telecommunications sector, which brought about private mobile telephony operators, has opened a new window of opportunity for many young people who are running informal businesses in the sector. However, the mobile telephony literature seem to focus mostly on the various uses to which mobile phones are put with little coverage given to informal entrepreneurial opportunities in the sector. Similarly, very little empirical research has been devoted to what is happening in the lives of many young people running businesses within Ghanaian, and African city settings. Drawing on a combination of quantitative and qualitative life course interviews conducted with young business owners in the mobile telephony sector in Accra, this paper investigates the extent to which running businesses in the mobile telephony sector influences transition to adulthood among the youth. The paper opens up by exposing the diversity of informal youth entrepreneurial activities in the mobile telephony sector and then argues strongly that engaging in business ventures in the mobile telephony sector is having a positive influence in the transition situation of the young people in the sector. The paper concludes by drawing implications with regard to public support generally for youth businesses.

Paper short abstract:

The paper explores how key strategies and techniques of the different parties function on a national level to respond to the need, shared by all categories of the African population, to communicate at a distance and how these strategies form a real "ecosystem"

Paper long abstract:

The expansion of mobile telephony in Africa thus remains an essentially urban phenomenon. To understand the hyper presence of mobile telephony in African cities and to grasp the eminently political dimension of networks and of their social construction and uses, my analysis is based on the "games of actors." The paper explores how key strategies and techniques of the different parties function on a national level to respond to the need, shared by all categories of the African population, to communicate at a distance and how these strategies form a real "ecosystem". We will examine how these processes overlap within the "urban fabric". One of the essential hypotheses is that, with regard to the specificities of countries in the Global South, the question of communication networks and technologies must be situated within a global context of a "paradoxical invention of modernity" (Bayart, 1994) linked to the importance of the informal economy. The adoption of mobile telephony in Africa shows that innovation is born as much from the local practices of users and small private service providers as in laboratories. This illustrates the process of "innovations by use" (Cardon, 2005) and the creative capacity "of the art of practice"displayed by ordinary people (de Certeau, 1980).

Paper short abstract:

The paper explores the perspectives and experiences of urban street traders in Uganda to establish the extent to which mobile ICTs are able to expand the network capabilities of poor women, in particular.

Paper long abstract:

ICT-enabled networks present opportunities to expand and foster engagement with wider social, economic and governance networks, in the context of broader development aims. Networks in themselves represent flows of information, socio-economic interactions and engagement with ICT-mediated services and applications. But, do they present the same opportunities and benefits to men and women? Are poor women able to effectively harness the possibilities? What factors inhibit and enable effective engagement with ICT networks? What are the costs of engagement and risks of exclusion?

The paper engages with these questions in relation to urban streets traders. Based on research conducted from 2006-2012 in Uganda, it draws on their experiences of, and perspectives on, what they are able to be and do in relation to mobile ICTs. It argues that particular contextual factors rooted in individual circumstances and choices, multi-dimensional forms of poverty, historical, socio-political and economic conditions shape outcomes on gender relations in complex and contradictory ways. The dynamic and fluid processes through which gendered inequalities compromise capabilities and functionings enabled by ICT networks are highlighted and the ways in which women realise beneficial outcomes are considered.

Paper short abstract:

Among Somalis in Kenya, the mobile money platform M-Pesa is widely used alongside traditional financial institutions, allowing greater flexibility for the cultivation of social networks. This paper seeks to understand how mobile telephony, and M-Pesa in particular, is re-shaping Somali monetary practices and the moral meaning of money

Paper long abstract:

Since the collapse of the central Somali state, the Somali diaspora in the Horn of Africa has been relying on communication technologies and remittances to cultivate social networks and livelihoods. Among Kenya's large Somali population, mobile telephony has become rapidly popular because it allows greater flexibility in both communicating and remitting. The latter is done through M-Pesa, a mobile money platform to transfer and store money. The purpose of this submission is to examine the usage of M-Pesa among Somalis in Nairobi. In particular, it endeavours to understand how this innovation is integrated within the Somali repertoire of financial institutions. Based on an ethnography conducted in the mostly Somali inhabited estate of Eastleigh, it discusses the implications of mobile money for the hawala, a trust-based remittance system widespread among Somalis, arguing that the interplay of M-Pesa and Somali financial arrangements informs monetary practices which bring to the fore the moral meaning of money. Illustrating the strategies deployed by the actors to cultivate multiplicity and preserve financial alternatives in a volatile environment, this paper aims to contribute to the reflection on the mutual influence of ICTs and ingrained notions of value.

Paper short abstract:

Women in Zanzibar use communication technologies to express themselves as part of daily interaction. This paper investigates the controversies between different generations about mobile phone and internet use, the fear of westernization and the ways technologies are embedded in this Islamic Swahili society.

Paper long abstract:

Public piety and Islamic awareness are rising in the islands of Zanzibar on the east coast of Tanzania. Internet and mobile phones are both used to consolidate social networks and to express religiosity. This paper investigates ideas about the relations between technology, Islam and the way women express religiosity and perform social relationships in daily life, both online and off. Even though mobile phones and social networking sites are used to express religiosity, the use of communication technologies are accompanied by feelings of fear of modernization and westernization. The older generation of women in particular claims that the youth are becoming westernized and their religious and cultural values are in decline. Young women find ways to negotiate the cultural and religious expectations of the society they are part of and embed communication technologies within their daily social lives and creating a more flexible space to express their identities.

Paper short abstract:

Youth are now actively building networks through the mobile phone which extend not merely across their own school, neighbourhood and city but to other regions and other countries, South and North. This paper considers the gendered and generational implications of the new connectivities emerging.

Paper long abstract:

The expansion of mobile phone use in sub-Saharan Africa has been remarkable in terms of both speed of adoption and spatial penetration: numbers are growing faster than in any other world region (Etzo &Collender 2010). In Ghana, whether through informal call centres, phone sharing or personal phone ownership, even very poor young people have access via mobile phones to a dramatically expanding network of social contacts. Not surprisingly, the mobile phone [in its increasingly sophisticated guises] has also itself become an essential requisite of youth style: an object of desire and a symbol of success. This brings to the fore important questions regarding the transformative potential of the mobile phone for improving young people's lives and life chances and also the destabilizing potential of previously unimagined levels of connectivity. The (gendered) developmental implications of rapid uptake among a young and possibly vulnerable population are still unfolding but youth are now actively building networks through the mobile phone which extend not merely across their own school, neighbourhood and city but to other regions and other countries, South and North. This paper focuses on preliminary findings from a new study to consider the gendered and generational implications of the new connectivities which are emerging.

Paper short abstract:

Cape Verde organise ICT infrastructures an use to improve e-government, e-active citizenship and development. The challenge is to realise a Cape verdian Information society, and a Global Cape Verdian Nation, including Diaspora.

Paper long abstract:

The Republic of Cape Verde is one of the African states who early organized infrastructures and use of ICT : t appears as a « laboratory » in Africa. The cap verdian experience can be analysed in three fields : 1) State governance : government organization, with the internal ICT government and administration network; government transparency, with dedicated information State; electoral management. 2) Growth Citizenship ICT users, with the Casa do Cidadão, one of the former experience in Africa to improve the relationship between State administration an citizens, including all islands and world capeverdian diaspora. Also, Make easier use of bogs an e-social networks as meaning to thwart citizen apathy. 3) ICT's for public and private development, with empowerment of service providers, NOSI (Nucleo Operacional da Sociedade de Information) and its public financial reform, the beginnig of one Centro Tecnologico, in network with universities and companies. Finally, Cape Verde realise a truly Information Society, integrating the Diaspora to realise a Global Cape verdian Nation.

Paper short abstract:

Online discussion forums have, for some years now, constituted new forms of expression in Burkina Faso. They raise questions as to the nature and vocation of professional journalism, but also as to the importance attached to freedom of expression in the country’s political sphere.

Paper long abstract:

User contributions on news websites have already been the subject of much research in Europe and North America. Drawing on a field survey conducted in Burkina Faso, this article aims to examine online discussion forums which, for some years now, have constituted the favoured means of expression of internet users in Burkina Faso. These participatory forums have stimulated the audience's interest in this small West African country, one of the poorest in the world, where significant material, editorial and political constraints weigh down on the practice of professional journalism. Besides influencing the practice of professional reporters, the forums have also attracted the attention of the authorities, as can be seen from the regular reprimands issued by the communications regulatory authority in charge of monitoring media contents. On several occasions, online debates have even influenced the political decision-making process, and this within a highly sensitive social and security context. This article attempts to show in what way these new forms of expression and the contents they convey raise questions as to the nature and vocation of professional journalism in Burkina Faso, but also as to the importance attached to freedom of expression and how it is treated in the country's political sphere.

Paper short abstract:

This paper seeks to explore the changing modality of discussing politics in ICT in contemporary Zanzibar and to interrogate the multiple participatory frames and identities constructed, reproduced or subverted across several media.

Paper long abstract:

Due to the uniqueness of the historical and socio-political context of the Zanzibar archipelago (compared to the coastal Swahili milieu of East Africa), political issues have always been discussed in a subtle and indirect way. Sociality has been enacted around the baraza - lit. sitting area outside traditional Swahili homes - intended, among others, as representing both "different degrees of formality/informality, institutionalization and abstractness" and as "a spectrum of places where people meet" (Loimeier, 2009:179). On the baraza Swahili individuals interact within their immediate community and, through it, with outer communities, negotiating social roles and multiple identities.

As ICT are undergoing a rapid growth, even on the Islands, Swahili communities are experiencing new modes of sociability and new constructions of identities. The virtual spaces in the spotlight are the cyber-baraza, that are, according to Farouk Topan (2006), blogs, e-mail networks and websites through which the Swahili communities are engaged in global interactions. These technologies and their application seem to reproduce the baraza at a different level, maintaining some modalities of its networks, but also altering others. They enable new communicative practices which allow a different approach to politics and a different modality of its discussion. The on-line display of these discourses is an interesting forum which focuses on the interaction among the global Swahili diaspora and the "globalized" Wazanzibari and brings our attention back to the contested issue of "identities", as experienced on the Islands.

This paper seeks to explore these changing modalities and to interrogate the multiple participatory frames and identities constructed, reproduced or subverted across several media.

Paper short abstract:

This paper would intend to discuss the phenomenon of ICTs as social transfers (remittances) from migration flows and how it impacts the source communities and further drives new ICTs expansion in Kebemer, Senegal.

Paper long abstract:

Along with ICTs' rapid growth in Africa, we have come to identify a parallel phenomenon that may serve as a driver of such growth. Migrants, whether temporary or permanent, who keep in contact with their families from the source community, tend to have added technology transfers in their remittance flow tools. We have found that, in conjunction (or in an endogenous relationship) with ICTs' infrastructure expansion in rural areas of Senegal, families with migrant members tend to be at the forefront of this new connectivity, which is further amplified through cultural diffusion in the community, impacting families with no migrants.

As part of this discussion, we wish to explore the possible endogenous nature of this technology transfer in the local West African context. Does migration drive infrastructure expansion to adapt to the demand, or does infrastructure expansion allow for migrants to adapt and improve their mobility (or both)?

Does the family on the receiving end of the technology possess sufficient knowledge and expertise to comprehend how their network sees itself suddenly and drastically expanded, or are they unaware of its possibilities, implying questions of education, awareness and technological appropriation?

Finally, drawing further on the potential of network expansions, while the panel may focus on linking African communities, we would wish to push this further within a migration framework and discuss how it connects them to the world and its ideas.

We will mainly be drawing from a case study conducted in the winter of 2012 in Senegal.

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