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A mobile text for everyone (The Times)

Wednesday, 2nd January 2008

I have a piece in today's Times on mobile phones in Kenya. Here's an extract, which explains why it's about far more than mobile phones in Kenya:

The single most fascinating thing I read last year was about the rise of mobile phones in Kenya. Not, you might think, the most thrilling of topics. In which case you'd be wrong, because it also helps to explain the murder of Benazir Bhutto, the reaction to Gordon Brown's refusal to call an election last autumn, the growth of the EU and the past few days' riots in Kenya.
The Cell Phone Revolution in Kenya, by June Arunga, tells a simple story: how, after the State had failed dismally to provide communications across Kenya, five years of private provision increased the number of mobile phones from one million to 6.5 million, so that more than a third of all Kenyan adults now own one.

...Granting property rights to the phone providers, coupled with what looked like political stability, enabled firms to invest and the Kenyan phone revolution to take hold.

But the past few days' events in Kenya demonstrate how tenuous is the basic foundation on which prosperity and freedom depends: the acceptance of the rule of law. We take for granted peaceful acquiescence in our own democratic processes.
...As for Benazir Bhutto's murder: the key question is whether Pakistan's future will always be shaped by violence, or if it can copy India and transform its fortunes through democratic consent. And that raises an even bigger question: whether Islamic states are inherently unable to embrace the basis of prosperity. On that hangs the shape of the 21st century.

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Ian C

January 2nd, 2008 10:55am

There is a critical point in a nation's, mainly economic but also social and therefore political development when democracy becomes the natural means of governance and even then is introduced in phases. This can happen only when the stake each member and institution within that society can be easily identified. It is a slow process as we know - Magna Carta began the whole process and even today we have effectively disenfranchised members of society. Where we have gone wrong in trying to 'force' democracy on others is in not allowing for this. We need to explain clearly the relevant lessons the West learnt in its long process of democratisation so that the route for others can be well informed and much shorter. I would suggest that it was a long-run boon that the Kenyan Government did not invest (impose) a fixed telephone system, but this is only just beginning to be obvious. This impact on democracy will be huge in the next few years as government will be unable to control the medium - one of the major obstacles in the way f full democracy in most no-democratic states.

Joshua

January 2nd, 2008 12:56pm

"Why have the former Warsaw Pact countries scurried to join the EU? To ensure that the property rights and rule of law that embed democracy are enshrined for ever" - It should be noted that they have not scurried to return the hundreds of billions of dollars of property that were stolen from the Jews they helped murder. As with Israel, it is a case of one rule for the gentile and another for the Jew.

Ross

January 2nd, 2008 5:44pm

I've heard similar things about the impact of mobile phones about Nigeria and Ghana too. In the first case it has gone from being a country where most people had never used a telephone in their lives 15 years ago to almost everyone having a mobile.

Verity

January 3rd, 2008 8:54pm

Hinduism, which is not actually a religion per se, is open and enquiring, which is why Indians make such a success out of medicine and the law and why they make such outstanding physicists. They're also outstanding enrepreneurs because they are willing to welcom, and explore, the new. Islam clanged the door shut on human thought in the Dark Ages, after mohammad had taken dictation from allah. It was presumed at the time that allah had already thought of everything humans needed, so no need to think up something new, like cars. Allah had already given them camels. An enquiring mind is not a trademark of islam,which is why it will remain anchored to the past and will continue to look backward. I'm not sure that the shape of the 21st Century hangs on whether islam has a reformation, though. We go ahead with or without them. It would be interesting if the inevitable reformation started in the New World. Indeed, I think that it will.