SMS Uprising: Mobile Activism in Africa

This collection of essays, published by Fahamu Books/Pambazuka Press, includes contributions by people engaged in using mobile phone technologies for social change, providing an analysis of the socio-economic, political, and media contexts faced by activists in Africa today. The essays address a broad range of issues including inequalities in access to technology based on gender and on rural and urban usage, as well as practical examples of how activists are using mobile technology to organise and document their experiences. The essays also provide an overview of the lessons learned in making effective use of mobile phone technologies "without any of the romanticism so often associated with the use of new technologies for social change". According to the publisher, the examples are shared in a way that makes them easy to replicate.

Contributions include the following:

• Economics and power within the African telecommunications industry - by Nathan Eagle
• Mobile activism in Africa: future trends and software developments - by Christian Kreutz
• Social mobile: empowering the many or the few? - by Ken Bank
• Mobiles in-a-box: developing a toolkit with grassroots human rights advocates - by Tanya Notley and Becky Faith
• Fahamu: using cell phones in an activist campaign - by Redante Asuncion-Reed
• The UmNyango project: using SMS for political participation in rural KwaZulu Natal - by Anil Naidoo
• Kubatana in Zimbabwe: mobile phones for advocacy - by Amanda Atwood
• Women in Uganda: mobile activism for networking and advocacy - by Berna Ngolobe
• Mobile telephony: closing the gap - by Christiana Charles-Iyoha
• Digitally networked technology in Kenya's 2007–08 post-election crisis - by Joshua Goldstein and Juliana Rotich
• Using mobile phones for monitoring human rights violations in the DRC - by Bukeni Waruzi