Africell and Gamcell

As an pretty devoted reader (and now subscriber) to the current affairs weekly the Economist, this week I'm going to write about the most exciting and fastest growing money-making enterprise going on in Gambia at the moment, and the cut-throat competition between the two big players in the field.

I'm talking, of course, about mobile phones. The Economist seems to run an article every couple of months about how mobile phones are such a great thing for developing economies, especially African ones. Here is a snip from Economist in July of this year

"IMAGINE a magical device that could boost entrepreneurship and economic activity, provide an alternative to bad roads and unreliable postal services, widen farmers' access to markets, and allow swift and secure transfers of money. Now stop imagining: the device in question is the mobile phone. Not surprisingly, people in the developing world are clamouring for them, and subscriber growth is booming. The fastest growth rates are to be found in Africa, albeit from a low base. Already, 80% of the world's population lives within range of a mobile network; but only about 25% have a mobile phone."



The full article is at: http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=4151426

The Gambia seems to be a pretty good example of the rapid rise of the African mobile phone industry: ten years ago only the telecommunications were via the hopeless government run landlines, but now there are two independent businesses competing to create the best mobile phone networks: these two companies are called Africell and Gamcell. Everywhere I've been on my fieldwork trips, I saw the advertising for these two, and every little shop in the whole country seems to sell the scratch cards for charging up your account.



This is the little advertising board for Africell that you see outside every shop selling their scratchcards - note how they have incorporated the red, blue and green of the Gambian flag into logo as the broadcast waves !











What I've found really fascinating about the mobile phone industry here is the ways in which it specially adapted to local needs. For example, Africell recently started a "Free 5kg bag of rice with every new Simcard offer", which has been very popular, especially as everyone is very hungry now in Ramadan, and will need to get lots of food together for the end-of-Ramadan celebrations.





Not sure how Gamcell are going respond to this stroke of marketing genius... maybe get the under-17 football team to endorse their product... The free market competition between these two is fun to watch, each trying to out-do the rival with cheaper prices, more offers and more advertising


Another good example of adaption to local needs comes from the handsets that are used here. The most popular ones around are some extremely robust Nokia handsets that have enormously long battery life - about 250 hours - which is useful as the power supply here is somewhat sporadic. These phones also have a built-in flashlight, again, mainly for use in the frquent power-cuts. Almost everyone uses scratchcards to charge up their phone account, and the calls are phenomenally cheap, by UK standards at least.



One major problem is coverage, especially away from the towns, but I think this is a bit of a supply-and-demand issue : they would extend the networks if there was going to be more people using them ... On map opposite, the coloured spots are where there is good coverage.




The main thing that seems to limit the spread of phones is the high cost of buying a handset: around 2500 dalasi for the phone, and 250 dalasi for the Simcard. This is about a months salary for most people here, and the high value of the phones mean that there are now specialised "phone-thieves" operating on many of the local minibuses ("bush-taxis"). As the Economist article I quoted above mentions, there is a pressing need for simple and cheap phone supply for this industry here - no need for fancy camera-phones and internet browsers, just cheap enough for every farmer, fisherman and housewife to be able to afford. Perhaps thats where some of the international aid pouring into Africa should be directed to: at least mobile phone subsidies would give people here something they really want, rather than patronising westerners (like myself) coming in and telling them how they should be running their lives ...

Anyhow. This seems to be one of my longer posts, hope you will comment if you enjoyed reading it.

Long live the president

With the help of a knowledgable medical student, I've circumvented the normal MRC blocking software and given this site a bit of a tidy-up. It should also enable you to make comments more easily, so hope any of you reading this can write something or even suggest any future ideas for topics...

I'm going to write a little about something this week that most Gambians are extrmemely reticent to discuss - the politics of their country. I'm going to try to be somewhat circumspect in what I say, so let me start first of all by saying "Long live President Jammeh!" Here is a photo of the big guy himself ...



President Jammeh (or His Excellency, Colonel(retired), Doctor El Hajj Yahya Jammeh to give him his full title) has been the top guy in the Gambia for 11 years, coming to power in a bloodless coup on 22 July 1994. This is a recent photo on a poster outside the Presidential Palace, he doesn't do photos in miliary uniform now.













He had this arch built at the main entrance to the capital to commemorate the coup that brought him to power : the July 22 Arch. Somewhat inconveniently, only the president's motorcade is allowed to go through the arch, everyone else has to make a detour.



Since coming to power, Jammeh has moved from being a military leader to being an elected leader after holding elections in 1996 and again in 2001. The names here are revealing : the group of army officers staging the coup were called the Armed Forces Provisional Ruling Committee (APRC), whilst Jammeh's party in the elections were called the Association for Progressive Reform Council (also abreviates to APRC!) , so you can see how far he has distanced himself from his military background ... Viva el presidente !


This is my favourite statue of President Jammeh (in front of the July 22 arch). He is shown with his gun over his shoulder, holding a baby in one arm and giving a Churchill-style v-for-victory. It is all gold plated.



Um. It is kind of difficult to write much more without sounding controversial. Have a look at the BBC country profile, it gives a bit of an idea. I think I better pick less sensitive topics in future - I've spent most of the time writing this post deleting things that I've written for being too "risky"...

Tuberculosis

I was a bit ill last week, hence the gap in my regular postings... Much better now.

I thought I would write a bit about tuberculosis this week. My major research project out here is looking at the spread of tuberculosis, and trying to assess the usefulness of various new tests for TB.

So... Tuberculosis (usually abbreviated to TB) is an ancient disease which has made a big recent comeback, and at present goes hand-in-hand with HIV/AIDS as a major killer in the developing world.

TB is a bacterial disease caused by the slow-growing Mycobacterium tuberculosis organism, which I've tried to put a microscope picture of below






This bacteria usually infects the lungs and is spread by coughing. The "classic" TB patient has a permanent cough, and sometimes coughs up blood ... Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge.

A typical chest x-ray (from a large pile of TB cases next to my desk!) looks like this :



TB is a strange disease in many ways: about 95% of the people who are infected with it will recover by themselves, though the disease may "reactivate" many years later. As well as affecting the lungs, it can also be in many other parts of the body: the spine, the skin, the brain, the heart.

My research is mainly based around finding out which people who were in contact with TB go on to develop the disease. I am working on a large study set up here at MRC in Gambia that is looking at about 2500 family members of people who had TB, and trying to find out which of these go on to have TB.

I'm also trying to evaluate some new blood tests that are being hailed as a new tool for TB. Basically, these tests count how many white blood cells a person has that are "targeted" towards TB, which should give an idea of whether the person has TB or is likely to develop it in the future.

Right, finally on TB is a bit I have shamelessly pinched from Wikpedia (the online encyclopedia) which I thought was quite interesting ...

"During the Industrial Revolution, tuberculosis was more commonly thought of as vampirism. When one member of a family died from it, the other members that were infected would lose their health slowly. People believed that the cause of this was the original victim was draining the life from his/her family members. To cure this, people would dig up the body of what they thought was the vampire, open the chest and burn the heart, sometimes with the rest of the body. Furthermore, people who had TB exhibited symptoms similar to what people considered vampire traits (and may be where much of the common mythology of the vampire comes from) . People with TB often had symptoms such as pale skin, thin stature, red, swollen eyes (which also creates a sensitivity to bright light) and would cough blood (which people often figured needed to be replenished because of the loss in this manner, i.e. sucking blood)."



Truth is stranger than fiction: in Malawi (in Southern Africa) in 2003 there was an outbreak of mob hysteria over fears that there were local vampires attacking children : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/2602461.stm . Perhaps this was something to do with the rampant TB epidemic that Malawi was (and still is) experiencing ...