August 3, 2006
Text messages catch on in mobile-mad Africa
Text messaging is starting to catch on in Africa, spawning a new lingo that squeezes slang, English and indiginous languages into snappy sentences, explains Yahoo News.
While demand for mobile phones is booming in Africa, SMS has remained largely the preserve of the middle class, but as cell phone firms face saturation at the top end of the market, they want poorer people to spend more. Teaching them to SMS is the obvious place to start.
"People are intimidated by SMS, they don't know that sending a text is cheaper than using a pay phone," said Mapula Sethusha, from MTN South Africa.
MTN, Africa's biggest cell phone operator, has published a dictionary of SMS lingo and is launching a campaign to teach poorer South Africans how to text message. A customer, for example, might want to text his "bra" or friend, about how his new "cheri" -- slang for girlfriend -- is "wara-wara" -- talks too much. He might want "2 tigers" -- 20 rand -- for some "nkauza," or cigarettes.
If mobile companies can persuade the millions of customers who spend as little as $5 a month on their cell phones to send an SMS instead of using a pay phone, the revenue impact could be significant. "We also hope that by convincing people to SMS, they will get used to using their phones more, and that will lead to higher spending on calls," says another executive at MTN South Africa.
Every morning MTN's SMS promoters make a bee-line for the lines of commuters snaking around the litter-strewn lot. "We go and talk to people and show them SMS," said Ursula Taffel. "When they see how it works, they get excited."
The Permanent Link to this page is: http://www.textually.org/textually/archives/2006/08/013113.htm
