We know that nanotechnology can build a golf club that will extend your drive by a few feet, but will it help the poor in South Africa? During the first two weeks of July the CNS Thematic Research Cluster on Equity, Equality, and Responsibility is conducting fieldwork in South Africa. CNS sent six researchers: Georgia Tech professor Susan Cozzens, Georgia Tech graduate students Thomas Woodson, Diran Soumonni, and Rodrigo Cortes, ASU assistant professor Jamey Wetmore and CSPO postdoc Matthew Harsh. For two weeks the group is interviewing scientists, researchers, policy officials, NGOs, corporations, funders, government lab employees, and a few local people to find out how nanotechnology is being researched, developed, and used in South Africa and what some possibilities for the future might be. The next few CSPO Soapbox entries will be written by the team from South Africa…
Cell phones in Africa
Much has been made about cell phones in Africa in the development literature over the last several years. They are making things possible that people have never before been able to do. I’m sitting here with Matt Harsh who has spent significant time in Kenya. He notes that with the most basic cell phone in Kenya you can transfer money with them person-to-person, pay for goods and services, pay utility bills (which is important because they’re all prepaid plans), get little bits of information including world cup scores and news headlines. And if your friend doesn’t have enough minutes on his or her phone, you can transfer minutes/credits to him or her. Oh and you can do voice mail and call anyone in the world.
OK, so for those of us living in the developed world this may not sound all that amazing. But imagine that you have no electricity, no clean water, and you make less than two dollars a day. And you have a cell phone. It’s something I’ve never quite been able to grasp. My monthly cell phone bill doesn’t put me into debt, but it certainly warrants a column in my budget. And while professors don’t get paid a huge amount of money, I do acknowledge that I get paid substantially more than the average African. So how can so many Africans get their hands on cell phones that it has changed the way people work, trade, and interact? I found out a couple days ago.
We’re staying in Cape Town, South Africa one of the most affluent cities on the entire continent. Because we’re trying to coordinate between six different scholars and dozens of interviews, the group decided we all needed cell phones. So I went downtown by the very touristy Waterfront to a large department store to see what they had. I may only use this phone on this trip, so I bought the cheapest one. It cost 69 rand. According to Xe.com 69 rand is about $10.29.
I know what you’re thinking in the US… “Hey, I got a phone for free!” But my South African phone doesn’t come with a contract. I prepaid 90 rand of credit. After a week, a few phone calls, a few dozen texts, and two calls to my grandmother’s answering machine in Indiana and I’ve spent a grand total of 20 rand.
Now it is the worst cell phone I’ve ever owned. It’s cheap plastic. The buttons are hard to push. And there certainly isn’t anything fancy like predictive text. But with an income of $2 a day, entering the cellular world seems pretty doable. And I can only imagine what a used phone would cost on the street of one of the townships. I suspect you could get a pretty good deal.
Some of the people we’ve been chatting with about nanotechnology point to the cell phone. A few years ago they were prohibitively expensive. Now they are affordable to nearly all and are having a profound effect. Can the same thing happen with nanotechnology? Most of the current applications lead to only minor improvements and tend to be reasonably expensive. But there is a possibility that some nano scientist will develop a technology that is truly transformative.
Oh, and did I mention that my South African phone has a feature that mine at home doesn’t even have? It has a flashlight. So when I’m sitting in an off-the-grid cabin in the middle of a desolate rural area of Africa I’ll still be able to read my guidebook.
And I have to issue a retraction… Matt just played with my phone for a moment and it does have predictive text… in both English and French.
About the Author: Jameson Wetmore is an assistant professor with CSPO and CNS-ASU, and ASU’s School of Human Evolution & Social Change.
Cell phones in Africa
Much has been made about cell phones in Africa in the development literature over the last several years. They are making things possible that people have never before been able to do. I’m sitting here with Matt Harsh who has spent significant time in Kenya. He notes that with the most basic cell phone in Kenya you can transfer money with them person-to-person, pay for goods and services, pay utility bills (which is important because they’re all prepaid plans), get little bits of information including world cup scores and news headlines. And if your friend doesn’t have enough minutes on his or her phone, you can transfer minutes/credits to him or her. Oh and you can do voice mail and call anyone in the world.
OK, so for those of us living in the developed world this may not sound all that amazing. But imagine that you have no electricity, no clean water, and you make less than two dollars a day. And you have a cell phone. It’s something I’ve never quite been able to grasp. My monthly cell phone bill doesn’t put me into debt, but it certainly warrants a column in my budget. And while professors don’t get paid a huge amount of money, I do acknowledge that I get paid substantially more than the average African. So how can so many Africans get their hands on cell phones that it has changed the way people work, trade, and interact? I found out a couple days ago.
We’re staying in Cape Town, South Africa one of the most affluent cities on the entire continent. Because we’re trying to coordinate between six different scholars and dozens of interviews, the group decided we all needed cell phones. So I went downtown by the very touristy Waterfront to a large department store to see what they had. I may only use this phone on this trip, so I bought the cheapest one. It cost 69 rand. According to Xe.com 69 rand is about $10.29.
I know what you’re thinking in the US… “Hey, I got a phone for free!” But my South African phone doesn’t come with a contract. I prepaid 90 rand of credit. After a week, a few phone calls, a few dozen texts, and two calls to my grandmother’s answering machine in Indiana and I’ve spent a grand total of 20 rand.
Now it is the worst cell phone I’ve ever owned. It’s cheap plastic. The buttons are hard to push. And there certainly isn’t anything fancy like predictive text. But with an income of $2 a day, entering the cellular world seems pretty doable. And I can only imagine what a used phone would cost on the street of one of the townships. I suspect you could get a pretty good deal.
Some of the people we’ve been chatting with about nanotechnology point to the cell phone. A few years ago they were prohibitively expensive. Now they are affordable to nearly all and are having a profound effect. Can the same thing happen with nanotechnology? Most of the current applications lead to only minor improvements and tend to be reasonably expensive. But there is a possibility that some nano scientist will develop a technology that is truly transformative.
Oh, and did I mention that my South African phone has a feature that mine at home doesn’t even have? It has a flashlight. So when I’m sitting in an off-the-grid cabin in the middle of a desolate rural area of Africa I’ll still be able to read my guidebook.
And I have to issue a retraction… Matt just played with my phone for a moment and it does have predictive text… in both English and French.
About the Author: Jameson Wetmore is an assistant professor with CSPO and CNS-ASU, and ASU’s School of Human Evolution & Social Change.
Great column. If at any point you want to test if you can transfer mobile-cash to a U.S. phone, I'll give you my number.
A secondary element of your column caught my eye. It was your description of South Africa as a "developing country." It caught my eye for the remarkable history of South Africa places it, in my mind, as one of the most "developed" countries that ever existed.
Underlying the typology of developed/developing countries there is a distinctive way of thinking about progress%u2014as well as nation, state, poverty, technology, and even democracy. Alternative classifications are perhaps worse because calling some countries "poor" sounds condescending, "the third world" is obsolete since the end of the Cold War, and "emerging economies" sounds too much like an investment banker's lingo. What is interesting of these less-polite typologies is that they embody the same imaginaries of progress as "developing countries."
I'm guilty of having used the typology multiple times in the past, and even perhaps having purchased those imaginaries of progress at some point, but increasingly I feel the concept obscures more than it illuminates the understanding of countries and peoples. Demarcating development is perhaps similar to demarcating science.
I hope you enjoy your time in South Africa.