Sometimes, several families living in places where the dream of getting a fixed phone line is unlikely to come true for at least 20 years share a mobile handset that they charge up from car batteries. Children run to neighbours to tell them that a relative will be calling back in a few minutes from New York or Rome. Huge billboard ads in Africa have made mobile phones as popular there as Coca-Cola. As one joke goes, A man loses his mobile phone in a crowd and asks someone to call his number. A few seconds later, the missing phone rings in the pocket of the policeman who was helping to look for it.
Mobiles are popular because of the dearth of fixed telephone lines in Africa.
In 1998, Europe had 37 lines for every 100 people while Africa only had two. Mobile phones have started to fill this communications gap. Although 80 per cent of them are currently found in rich countries, in the 1990s the number of subscribers in poor countries grew faster than anywhere else. Africa had almost 3.5 million mobile phone subscribers in 1998. The figure for Asia was 30 per cent.