July 7, 2005
Community phones change lives of Rwandan farmers
Rwanda's economy is recovering after being hit by the country's 1994 genocide which destroyed most of the roads and telecommunications infrastructure, reports Reuters.
In March 2004, MTN Rwanda, the only mobile telecoms company in the country launched a community pay phone dubbed "tuvugane," meaning "let's all talk." It has since penetrated deep into the countryside, transforming the lives of thousands of rural people.
"We carried a survey and found that communication needs in the rural areas were greater than those in urban areas," said Emmanuel Hategeka, from MTN Rwanda. "That's why we introduced a community phone that would be affordable to rural folk since they do not have to buy a handset."
Manufactured by a South African company, the "Tuvugane" handset looks like a fixed line, but an antenna attached to it picks up signals from mobile phone satellite transmitters.
The phone has become so popular that rural dwellers now take out micro-financing loans from locally-based lenders to buy the Tuvugane payphone.
"The phone has become a money-making machine," Hategeka said. "You find that instead of someone selling tomatoes which could get rotten and make heavy losses, he invests his money in the community phone."
Related:
-- GSM payphones bring communications to rural Rwanda communities.
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