Abstract
The uptake of mobile phones on the African continent is the fastest diffusion of technology in the history of humanity. Mobile phones are changing the lives of people from all socio-economic backgrounds across the gender, age, geographical, language and literacy divides. What Castells calls the “Fourth World” is progressively shrinking as more and more people in even the most remote areas become connected (Castells 2000). In this chapter I describe how Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)—and particularly mobile phones-contribute to the empowerment of people in a rural area in South Africa. This work is based on the eight-year experience of the Siyakhula Living Lab, a holistic and multi-disciplinary ICT-fordevelopment project. After a discussion of selected research conducted thus far, I discuss six stories of empowerment through mobile technology.
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