Mobile phones : the new talking drums of everyday Africa

"We cannot imagine life now without a mobile phone" is a frequent comment when Africans are asked about mobile phones. They have become part and parcel of the communication landscape in many urban and rural areas of Africa and the growth of mobile telephony is significant: from 1 in 50 people being users in 2000 to 1 in 3 in 2008. This collective volume examines the many ways in which mobile phones are being appropriated by Africans and how they are transforming or are being transformed by society. It brings together reflections on developments around the mobile phone by scholars of six African countries (Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ghana, Mali, Sudan and Tanzania) who explore the economic, social and cultural contexts in which the mobile phone is being adopted, adapted and harnessed by mobile Africa. The papers were earlier presented at a workshop in the Netherlands in 2006. Contributions: An excerpt from "Married but available", a novel by Francis B. Nyamnjoh; Introduction: mobile communication and new social spaces in Africa (Mirjam de Bruijn, Francis B. Nyamnjoh & Inge Brinkman); Phoning anthropologists: the mobile phone's (re-)schaping of anthropological research (Lotte Pelckmans); From the elitist to the commonality of voice communication: the history of the telephone in Buea, Cameroon (Walter Gam Nkwi); The mobile phone, "modernity" and change in Khartoum, Sudan (Inge Brinkman, Mirjam de Bruijn & Hisham Bilal); Trading places in Tanzania: mobility and marginalization at a time of travel-saving technologies (Thomas Molony); Téléphonie mobile: l'appropriation du SMS par une "société de l'oralité" (Ludovic Kibora); The healer and his phone: medicinal dynamics among the Kapsiki/Higi of North Cameroon (Wouter van Beek); The mobility of a mobile phone: examining "Swahiliness" through an object's biography (Julia Pfaff); Could connectivity replace mobility? An analysis of Internet café use pattersn in Accra, Ghana (Jenna Burrell).