Mobiles break bones as Africa aims high

In rural parts of Uganda,medical workers found themselves overwhelmed by the number of elderly men and women who had sought treatment for broken arms and legs.

What he was describing, as it turned out, was one of the incidental outcomes of the spread of mobile phone use in Uganda.

The speed at which the mobile phone companies were rolling out their networks had not kept pace with the rate at which the phones were being bought and distributed all over the country.

So there were parts of rural Uganda in which there were plenty of elderly men and women with mobile phones, but where the network signal was so weak that the only way to make a phone call was to climb up a tree on some nearby hill, and make your call while clinging to its branches.

When old people begin to climb tall trees there is bound to be a sudden increase in falls and broken bones.

Hence the epidemic of Nebrols - an acronym for the Network Broken Limbs Syndrome.

And although Buwembo was only joking, the mobile telephone business in Africa has been a remarkable success story, which involved some of the best-known names in global telecommunications.

In Kenya, for example, the fixed line networks have not risen much beyond the approximately 400,000 lines that had been connected by the year 2000.

But in the past six years, almost five million mobile lines have been registered, and what was once a rich man's toy, is now to be found in the hands of every street vendor and market woman.

This, however, has led to some dangerous "magic thinking" on the benefits of modern technology, and a conviction in some government circles that other easy solutions can be found to problems of public infrastructure.

The Kenyan Minister for Information and Technology, for example, recently declared that "Information Technology will be the main driver of Kenya's economic growth", a statement that overlooks the fact that with 80% of Kenyans being small scale farmers, it is greater agricultural productivity that is more likely to yield such growth.

But such wild optimism was only to be expected.

Not only was this complete modernization of the telecommunications sector achieved within a few short years and at no cost to the government.

In addition, the mobile phone companies have since proved to be so profitable, they are now some of the biggest corporate taxpayers.

However this is not the sort of miracle that can be replicated in every sector of the economy.

Mobiles are hailed as economic saviours

There can be no painless solution, for example, to the fact that Kenya's electricity tariffs are so high that they make most Kenyan manufactured goods uncompetitive in export markets.

And although solar panels capable of providing free electric power have been available for much longer than mobile phones, these are still too expensive for most rural communities in Africa, where women continue to light kerosene lamps every evening.

Which goes a long way to explain why most people walk for miles to the nearest market centre, to charge their new mobile phones.

Are we pushing technology too much on africa? They have never had an industrial revolution... from hunter gathering to GPRS Internet.... can they handle it?

I dunno about africa in general but I suppose that as they develope there technologies will improve over time.

yeh but come on tom, i mean that no ecuse for old people breaking bones, somthing needs to be done

They havent been through an agricultural, let alone industrial revolution; their cultre just cannot handle the new technology, and the western culture is being forced upon them; and it has a strtange affect as we can see; its quite a serious matter, besides, its alot deeper than old people breaking bones. it is affesting their culture; someone needsto do some thinking; and sort out how they can properly implement cheaper infrastructure, with modern standards, instead of trying to fit a square peg in to a round hole; wby using an older, cheaper infrastructure. They really need newer, slimmer systems and infrastructur... It is pissible, but seeing as we are pushing the technology on them, shouldnt we make it fairer for them?

that story is...weird

Personally, Africa is not ready for this kind of technology that the world has. I guess we just have to wait and see what happens

-Jose C.

Well Africa as far as i know is a very poor country and I have to agree that something needs to be done soon. there is no need that old people are breaking bones.