Academic literature on the topic 'Mobile communication systems – Economic aspects – Africa'

Since the invention, the mobile phone is becoming more and more popular to lead the communication sector and it has been the spirit of personal communication from the beginning of 80s. Furthermore, developing countries which have always been on the search for affordable communication solutions found mobile communication the most popular method. Low cost communication, infrastructure, and maintenance are some of the key reasons that make mobile technologies popular in developing countries. Statistics depict that the usage of short messages is one of the main communication method in developing countries and most of the organizations are using SMS (Short Message Service) as a tool to assist people, especially in African and Asian continents. Sri Lanka, as a developing country, has a unique culture which has emerged scaling many centuries, mixing with various neighboring cultures. Recently the western cultural influence has dramatically changed the various cultural aspects of the urban population. The rapid economic growth, the changes in agriculture based economic environment, advances in communication and media, and globalization trends has transformed the cultural experiences of Sri Lankans. Taking into account the speedy progress of the mobile technology, especially the SMS, the evolution of the Sri Lankan way of living which has absorbed the culture that has developed with the use of mobiles, and the long literary history where poetry had played a major role in communication, we are observing the suitability of the Blogwall system, an interactive system which operates on user SMS and provides opportunities for creative poetry by combining visual art and poetry.

The 5th Generation (5G) of mobile communication networks is being developed to address the demands and business contexts of 2020 and beyond. Its vision is to enable a fully mobile and connected society and also to trigger socio-economic transformations in ways eventually unimagined today. This means that the physical world to be covered with planned 5G networks including communication networks, humans and objects is becoming a type of an information system. So as to improve the experience of individuals, communities, societies, etc. within such systems, a thorough comprehension of intelligence processes responsible of generating, handling and controlling those data is fundamental. One of the major aspects in this context and also the focus of this chapter is the development of novel methods to model human mobility patterns, which have crucial role in forthcoming communication technologies. Human mobility patterns models can be categorized into synthetic, trace-based and community-based models. Synthetic models are largely preferred and widely applied to simulate mobile communication networks. They try to capture the patterns of human movements by means of a set of equations. These models are traceable, however, not capable of generating realistic mobility models. The key idea of trace-based models is the exploitation of available measurements and traces achieved in deployed systems to reproduce synthetic traces characterized by the same statistical properties of real traces. A main drawback of trace-based modeling of human patterns is the tight coupling between the trace-based model and the traces collected, the network topology deployed and even the geographic location, where the traces were collected. This is why the results of various trace-based models deviate clearly from each other. Sure, this prohibits the generalization of trace-based models. When one also considers that the traces themselves are rarely available, one can understand why synthetic models are preferred over trace-based ones. Community-based modeling of human movements depends on the fact stating that mobile devices are usually carried by humans, which implies that movement patterns of such devices are necessarily related to human decisions and socialization behaviors. So, human movement routines heavily affect the overall movement patterns resulting. One of the major contributions in this context is the application of social networks theory to generate more realistic human movement patterns. The chapter highlights the state of art and provides a comprehensive investigation of current research efforts in the field of trace- and social-based modeling of human mobility patterns. It reviews well-known approaches going through their pros and cons. In addition, the chapter studies an aspect that heavily relates to human mobility patterns, namely the prediction of future locations of users.

One of the signature historical phenomena of the past 500 years has been the global expansion of European societies and their trans-Atlantic offshoots. The mercantile networks, commercial systems, and empires of conquest and colonization that formed the political and economic framework of that expansion involved the discovery and extraction of new mineral and agricultural resources, the establishment of new infrastructures of transport and communication, and the forcible relocation of millions of people. Another key component was the Columbian Exchange, the multiple transfers of people, animals, plants, and microbes that began even before Columbus, gathered pace after 1492, and were further fuelled as European settlement advanced into Africa, Australasia, and the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Donkeys evolved in the Old World and were confined there until the Columbian Exchange was underway. This chapter explores the introduction of the donkey and the mule to the Americas and, more briefly, to southern Africa and Australia. In keeping with my emphasis on seeking archaeological evidence with which to illuminate the donkey’s story, I omit other aspects of its expansion, such as the trade in animals to French plantations on the Indian Ocean islands of Réunion and Mauritius or, on a much greater scale, India to meet the demands of the British Raj. These examples nevertheless reinforce the argument that mules and donkeys were instrumental in creating and maintaining the structures of economic and political power that Europeans and Euro- Americans wielded in many parts of the globe. From Brazil to the United States, Mexico to Bolivia, Australia to South Africa, they helped directly in processing precious metals and were pivotal in moving gold and silver from mines to centres of consumption. At the same time, they aided the colonization of vast new interiors devoid of navigable rivers, maintained communications over terrain too rugged for wheeled vehicles to pose serious competition, and powered new forms of farming. Their contributions to agriculture and transport were well received by many of the societies that Europeans conquered and their mestizo descendants. However, they also provided opportunities for other Native communities to maintain a degree of independence and identity at and beyond the margins of the European-dominated world.

[The final form of this paper was published in the journal Issues in Informing Science and Information Technology.] The significance of ICTs in supporting socio-economic development in developing countries is inevitable. As academics of information systems in developing countries, we cannot ignore the need for teaching and building the capacity of our students to become knowledgeable and skilled in Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) practice and discourse. Furthermore, it is vital to equip our students with the ability to apply their discipline knowledge in addres