SMS Uprising: Mobile Phone Activism in Africa

Sokari Ekine is a Nigerianactivist with a background in technology, education, and human rights. She has worked in adult education and for several online publications, including Pambazuka News. She is the author of the blog Black Looks."

SMS is the acronym for Short Message Service phone technology (or Silent Messaging Service). SMS Uprising: Mobile Activism in Africa offers practical examples of how activists in Africa are using mobile technology to organize and document their experiences and how the phones capabilities have had a dynamic influence on activists aims and strategies. The authors activists, academics and technology specialists look at inequalities in access to technology based on gender and rural and urban usage, and consider how mobile phones increasing integration with the internet helps activists internationalize their struggles.

Introduction - Sokari Ekine Part I: The context 1 Economics and power within the African telecommunications industry - Nathan Eagle 2 Mobile activism in Africa: future trends and software developments - Christian Kreutz 3 Social mobile: empowering the many or the few? - Ken Banks 4 Mobiles in-a-box: developing a toolkit with grassroots human rights advocates - Tanya Notley and Becky Faith Part II: Mobile democracy: SMS case studies 5 Fahamu: using cell phones in an activist campaign - Redante Asuncion-Reed 6 The UmNyango project: using SMS for political participation in rural KwaZulu Natal - Anil Naidoo 7 Kubatana in Zimbabwe: mobile phones for advocacy - Amanda Atwood 8 Women in Uganda: mobile activism for networking and advocacy - Berna Ngolobe 9 Mobile telephony: closing the gap - Christiana Charles-Iyoha 10 Digitally networked technology in Kenya's 2007-08 post-election crisis - Joshua Goldstein and Juliana Rotich 11 Using mobile phones for monitoring human rights violations in the DRC - Bukeni Waruzi