Mobile cash transfers changing rural lives

DOREEN NAWA, Lusaka
DURING the days of European colonisation, Africa was unfairly dubbed ‘The Dark Continent’ by late United States journalist and explorer Henry Stanley.
Stanley arrived at this conclusion because of the numerous challenges that the continent faced in communication.
But today, mobile phones are ‘lighting up’ most African countries, including Zambia, to an extent seen nowhere else on earth.
In fact it’s fair to say that out of today’s modern technological and societal advances, it is mobile phones that have changed lives most rapidly on the continent in the last decade.
A sim card and a mobile phone have changed Namasiku Sililo’s life. It was just a sim card placed in a mobile phone and Mrs Sililo could receive money in the comfort of her home.
Her son, based in Lusaka, first bought her a phone five years ago.
“My son in Lusaka bought me a phone in 2010 and because I did not know how to operate it, my granddaughter got it. Two years later he visited again and insisted that I should have a phone. He again bought me another one,” Mrs Sililo said.
The 70-year-old peasant farmer of Mulimambango village in Sesheke district, Western Province, knew nothing about modern communication until she came home one day to find that his son in Lusaka had sent money through a mobile phone.
It was a K500 windfall, which she was free to spend on whatever she wished.
It was a big surprise for the granny.
But such use of mobile phones and other telecommunication technological devices are part of the shift in thinking about how best to use the gadgets to help the poor.
For decades, it was thought that the poor needed almost everything done for them, like a community worker going to a particular village to manually deliver money or sending the cash through a letters enclosed in an envelope.
Few people would trust anyone to spend money responsibly.
Another resident of Sesheke, George Lutangu, says the idea of receiving money through a text message on a mobile phone has changed the lives of many not only in his community but countrywide.
With the mobile money transfer service in place, Mr Lutangu sends cash to his daughter at Lukulu Secondary School without any hurdles or any doubt on its safety.
“One thing I have always been conscious with is the security of my money, like how secure is sending money through a mobile phone? But I can attest to this that mobile money is very secure. I have been using it for over two years now,” Mr Lutangu said.
Communication is a human necessity the world over, but in Africa where much of the usual infrastructure is just being developed, access to an easy method of communication is like gold-dust especially to rural people.
Using the short messaging system (SMS), Zambia’s mobile operator Airtel pioneered a mobile payment system in 2012 called Mobile Money.
This allows users to charge their account with real money at a shop or booth offering that function, and then use this credit to pay for almost anything via an SMS to the vendor’s account.
Users can also receive or send money to relatives, and deal in extremely small amounts. The cost of using it? Just one SMS.
Airtel Mobile Money is not the only mobile money application used in Zambia.
MTN and ZOONA are also popular in Zambia.
Farmers, too, use mobile money to pay for their farming inputs more often than conventional banking, which points to the fact that it is more convenient.
Information and communication technology (ICT) is evolving at an extraordinary pace, changing the way people live and work.
In recent years advances in mobile phone penetration and other new technologies in low-income settings like the rural areas.
This could mean there is growing interest from investors, practitioners and governments in exploring and exploiting technology and how it can serve the rural populations.
The mobile money revolution has spilled out of Africa, and is one way in which the continent leads the world in mobile application development, as it’s now used in India, Romania, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
In general, the opening up of knowledge to people, who would otherwise lack access to it is probably the biggest achievement of mobile phones in Africa.
However, the lack of very advanced and broad societal infrastructure on the continent can hold people back from accessing such basic services as water, sanitation, education, and healthcare.
With no easy access to libraries or the internet via broadband, it is left to mobile phone service providers to offer Africans knowledge about topics that will enrich their lives.
With industry in Africa being largely agriculture, applications have sprung up to help farmers get better harvests, or trade their produce more easily.
This empowers African farmers to make a better living than they once would, even if they are small-scale.
For example in Zambia, the Zambia National Farmers’ Union uses an application called ZNFU4455, which allows small-scale farmers to send a text message and get feedback on the market, pricing and farming inputs.
The good news is that the innovation is set to continue, especially that a new kind of phone is coming to the fore in Africa.
There is no single answer to delivering cash to people in low-income communities like the rural areas, but the use of a mobile phone has given the continent the lead ahead of others. THIS ARTICLE WAS PUBLISHED IN THE ZAMBIA DAILY MAIL ON JUNE 12, 2015.