I listen to Radio One in the morning. Chris Moyles and a bunch of other celebrities walked up Kilamanjaro to raise money for charity. Now Moyles has just got back from a trip to Uganda to give out malaria nets with the money raised.
He said that two things surprised him about Uganda. It’s very green and lush; and everyone has mobile phones.
I think part of the reason everyone thinks Africa is brown and dry is Live Aid. “Where nothing ever grows; no rain or rivers flow.” Never mind forced relocation. Looking around on loc.alize.us, Uganda is a bit greener than Ethiopia.
Uganda:
Ethiopia:
Mobile phones, of course, are a triumph of capitalism. On the radio, Aled correctly pointed out that they have been so successful because they don’t require the massive infrastructure of land lines, so that stage was skipped.
A listener asked a good question: if people can afford mobile phones, why can’t they afford malaria nets? Part of the problem is probably education: the charity workers are also having to teach people why and how to use the nets, so perhaps there is currently little demand for them. But if businesses don’t spring up to meet such a demand I’d want to know why.
Another question: would using more insecticides in agriculture reduce malaria?
Update: Michael Jennings commented on this post with a long article about mobile phones in Africa. As for why they might be more common than mosquito nets:
I would suggest that it is because mobile phones are cheaper. Such are the benefits of mass production and massive economies of scale. Also, second hand phones from the rich world end up in the poor countries in huge numbers – no such markets exist in mosquito nets. Also, I suspect that more people actually do have mosquito nets than Chris Moyles thinks – it’s just that nets provided by informal networks do not show up in his sort of statistics.
My suggestion about education originated in Moyles’ comment that many of those receiving the free nets didn’t know what they were for; and that the charity workers were planning to visit everyone and make sure they were using them correctly. I suspect people would figure it out (and are) without charity workers, one way or another.