Mobile Phone in Sub-Saharan Africa

This research aims to identify the kind of mobile phone that the people living in sub-saharan Africa need. As the mobile phone manufacturers of today have targeted the populations with high purchasing power world-wide the products available have been developed, almost exclusively, with the urbanist in mind. However, the increasing demands from the unexploited rural markets make the efforts to adapt the mobile devices to these environments necessary and presumably inevitable. The project sought to clarify four sub-issues of this adaptation: What does the current market look like and how feasible is this project? What target audience is the most important? How does this group use their phones today? What constraints exist in terms of physical and environmental factors?A pre-study was made in Sweden with interviews and preparations, and a field-study was conducted in The Gambia, which was chosen as a suitable country, representing the average high-end of lesser developed countries of Africa.