Ethan points to a very interesting article in New York Times about the situation around the mobile phone market in Nairobi and the rest of Southern Africa. Pascal Zachary gives a round up about the problems using a mobile and developing applications for mobiles.

Four times as many people have them as have bank accounts. Text messages are far more popular than e-mail. Safaricom, the dominant mobile provider, offers a service called M-pesa that lets customers send money with text messages. Nokia sells brand-new phones here for as little as $33. [snip taken from here]

The article also points to Googles initative in East Africa. Google is massively hiring, down in Southern Africa. See to open positions here.