Malawian Blogger Soyapi Mumba recently posted [his thoughts][soyapi] on the usefulness of [Twitter][twitter] in Africa. He notes that because so few Africans have access to computers, the usefulness of web technology like blogs email is limited, and people there have resorted to using radio for spreading announcements–even personal ones like deaths or family illnesses–among people. Cellphone use in the continent is much more widespread, and Soyapi lists a number of ways Africans could use a service like Twitter to update each other.

Soyapi’s got some good ideas about Twitter, but his ideas aren’t especially uniquely applicable to Africa. Doing things like sharing sports scores, news, and announcements via cellphone has been tried around the world. There’s a company working out of [Accra, Ghana][accra], however, that’s using text-messaging technology to actually help with the country’s development issues, and I think it’s got some real potential.

[soyapi]: http://soyapi.blogspot.com/2007/03/potential-of-twitter-in-africa.html “The Potential of Twitter in Africa”
[twitter]: http://twitter.com “Twitter”
[accra]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accra%2C_Ghana “Accra, Ghana on Wikipedia”

### Celling for a profit?

I first heard about [TradeNet][tradenet] in a January, 25th [article][article] in the Economist. The Ghanaian firm plans to host a virtual marketplace of sorts for a dozen west African countries. The idea’s pretty simple: Suppliers of a good such as wheat or cocoa send a text-message announcing their wares to TradeNet, which then forwards the message to it’s subscriber list of purchasers. All via SMS, producers and suppliers can negotiate a price and make a sale.

According to the Economist piece, TradeNet’s run by Mark Davies, “a British dotcom tycoon who gave up the rat race and went to Africa” over five years ago. It doesn’t say he’s uninterested in making a profit, though, and indeed TradeNet is subsidizing it’s service by appending advertisements to the messages it shuttles back and forth. (Question: Just how do you manage to stuff the message _and_ the ad in the 140-character limit of most SMS services?) The service is also gathering valuable economic data about the marketplace it’s helping develop, and it’s leveraging its knowledge about the marketplace to sell more ads.

TradeNet sounds like a promising project, and it’s certainly tapping a booming market. An August, 2005 [New York Times article][nyt] pegs Africa as the fastest growing cellphone market, with subscriber rates seeing and average annual increase of 58% from 1999 to 2004. While most cell-based industries springing up in developing countries are the work of individuals selling calls to folks who don’t have their own phones–read _[The Operator][operator]_ in Wired magazine for an example–it’s interesting to see larger companies offer national and even international services bridging the gap between developing regions and cellphone use.

I’ll be posting more about innovative uses for Twitter, but for the moment I’ve got one lingering question about the TradeNet service. The Economist piece says that founder Davies spent $800,000 setting up the service, and that sounds like a lot to me. If anyone from Twitter wants to [get in touch](/contact/ “Contact me”) to share their costs, I’m all ears…

_Thanks, [Chris][factoryjoe], for the link to Soyapi’s post_.

**Update [April 12]:** I’ve opened comments for this post.

[tradenet]: http://www.tradenet.biz/ “TradeNet”
[article]: http://www.tradenet.biz/press/articles/07_01_25_economist.htm “Buy, cell, hold”
[nyt]: http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60A1FFC355A0C768EDDA10894DD404482 “Cellphones Catapult Rural Africa to 21st Century”
[operator]: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.04/posts.html “The Operator article at Wired”
[factoryjoe]: http://factoryjoe.com/blog/ “FactoryJoe”