Mobile in the rest of the world

I carry around a Nexus One and an iPhone. Karanja carries around a Nokia 1600, the cheapest data-enabled phone you can buy ($25). Why? He does this so that he understands what his customers need and use. His clients aren’t your upper-class Blackberry toting professionals, they’re the “wananchi” (the ordinary person).

That’s Erik Hersman of WhiteAfrican.com talking about Kenyan entrepreneur Karanja Macharia in his post A Rising Tide: Africa’s Tech Entrepreneurs.

Hersman gives us a fantastic overview of the ingenuity that African entrepreneurs are showing by working with what’s there: SMS infrastructure, low internet penetration (mobile and otherwise), low incomes, and high mobile penetration.

Also see: Peter-Paul Koch’s February post The iPhone obsession.