The things that determine and surround our lives, such as tools, means of transport, the products of science, technology and art, are extremely refined. Yet individual culture, at least in the higher strata, has not progressed at all to the same extent.
(Georg Simmel 1907 [1990: 448])INTRODUCTION
It has been noted with surprise in recent years that mobile phones play a much greater role in the change of the communications landscape in Africa than in Europe. By the year 2001 the number of telephone registrations for mobile phones already exceeded the figure for fixed phones in most African countries.Footnote 1 In Europe this predominance of mobile phones occurred only some years later, in 2004/05. Indeed, in some parts of Africa the use of mobile phones constituted the first opportunity ever to participate in telecommunications, because the few existing telephones often only worked on an irregular basis, especially in rural areas.Footnote 2 Although geographical coverage by mobile networks in Africa is still incomplete, it has increased exponentially albeit erratically in recent years (ITU 2006: 124ff.). In particular, the use of the telephone in urban areas has experienced a real boom, but in rural areas too, mobile phones are gaining popularity (Cronin Reference Cronin2004). Only a few years ago, whole districts had to manage without phones. Today, cellular phones are widespread in many African countries, such as Burkina Faso, and everybody has got used to their presence (Elegbeleye Reference Elegbeleye2005). Mobile phones are part of the new Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), and the role they play in contributing to the development of Africa is discussed widely (Melkote & Steeves Reference Melkote, Steeves, Okigbo and Eribo2004; van Binsbergen Reference van Binsbergen, van Binsbergen and van Dijk2004).
From a Western perspective, the mobile phone is often perceived as a mere gadget; but in the least developed countries (LDCs) it can provide previously unavailable opportunities for communication over long distances. In its most recent report the International Telecommunication Union (ITU 2006) has even argued that the ICT may contribute to poverty reduction. But, as we demonstrate, using this technology is locally perceived merely as a tool for keeping up with global trends, rather than reducing poverty. Thus, we point to specific modes of dealing with mobile phones in Burkina Faso, and explain these peculiarities as a result of the process of ‘cultural appropriation’ of the mobile phone (Do-Nascimento Reference Do-Nascimento and Gabas2005a; Pejout Reference Pejout and Gabas2005). We understand ‘appropriation’ as a particular strategy within the larger framework of domestication, as laid out by Marshall Sahlins (Reference Sahlins1993) and others (Du Gay Reference Du Gay1997; Stewart Reference Stewart2003).Footnote 3 The concept of ‘cultural appropriation’ constitutes a conceptual framework particularly suitable for technical devices, as shown by Silverstone et al. (Reference Silverstone, E., D. and Silverstone1992). Elsewhere, one of the authors has explained in more detail the empirical fields connected to cultural appropriation (Hahn Reference Hahn, Probst and Spittler2004). ‘Cultural appropriation’ explains how a globally circulating phenomenon like the mobile phone may receive specific usages and meanings. Thus, domestication and appropriation are concepts about the transformation of ideas, things and institutions.
As is the case for many complex technologies in Western societies, the mobile phone is the subject of an ambiguous evaluation. Leading questions vividly discussed in newspapers and journals include: Can the daily use of mobile phones have a negative influence on social behaviour and social order? Is people's health affected by the accompanying transmitters? Hence the euphoria about unlimited reach and the boundlessness of communication is countered by a deep uncertainty concerning the side-effects of this new technology. This ambivalence exists in the perspective of rural Burkinabé, too, even if their reasons vary considerably, as we show in this article.
From a general point of view, telecommunication and telephones are frequently equated with modernity, and the notions of increasing speed and decreasing distance. This applies especially to mobile phones. Among other aspects, their high prestige is based on their unique capability to spatially delimit communication (Katz Reference Katz2006: 145). This is one of the reasons why mobile phones have become such an icon of globalisation, worldwide communication and borderless connections (Warnier Reference Warnier1999). The ubiquitous presence of the phone, and the constant expectancy of being called up and immediately becoming part of the global communication network, is at the root of the image of this technology as a generally accepted symbol of globalisation. Nor can public opinion in Burkina Faso concerning the mobile phone be separated from globalisation and the tangible local consequences of this new phenomenon. Many Burkinabé are convinced that even the most remote rural areas will be unable to resist the influence of globalisation, making it all the more necessary for new technologies like the mobile to be made available in every corner of the country. Whether and, if so to what extent, countries like Burkina Faso participate in globalisation or are merely excluded, is a highly debated issue (Smith Reference Smith2003). We are in no position to comment on these topics in the limited space of this article. Instead, we understand the relevance of globalisation for the appreciation of mobile phones in Burkina Faso merely on the basis of the local imaginary of globalisation (Nyamba Reference Nyamba and Chéneau-Loquay2000).Footnote 4
Actually, ‘spaces of globalisation’ such as train stations, airports and trade fairs are where mobile phones are typically used most intensely. But what kind of communication is constituted by their use? Obviously they represent new modes of communication. Yet people in ‘spaces of globalisation’, even when they are in the same room, do not communicate with one another, but rather with persons who are at a distance. For this reason Marc Augé (Reference Augé1992) questions the very communicativeness of such places, calling them ‘non-lieux’. In his opinion, the particular mode of communication at these places is best understood as an expression of the increasing ‘individualisation of society’, one of the key features of the so-called post-modernist era. Mobile phones are ideal means of personal control of communication. For instance, it is not customary to publish one's mobile number in a telephone directory. Thus, the choice of potential partners in mobile communication can be controlled much better than with fixed phones. This brings us once again to the question of whether social relations are affected adversely rather than positively by mobile communication and, if so, in what manner.
In this article, these questions are discussed with a particular focus on the societies in Burkina Faso. We suggest that people in Burkina Faso have particular practices in dealing with mobile phones, and that in the local societies of that country a specific valuation prevails. As we show, ‘the same technology [of cellular phones] can take on different meanings across changes in cultural contexts and thus be used in radically different ways’.Footnote 5 Further, we point out that mobile telecommunication has much to do with globalisation, but instead of breaking up social structures, as might be expected, it has been adapted to a degree that it affirms and supports the spheres of local culture, solidarity and parental links.
Recent research on mobile phones in West Africa (Slater & Kwami Reference Slater and J.2005) and Jamaica (Horst & Miller Reference Horst and D.2005) has shown that highly selective networks of communication dominate conversational behaviour outside Europe, too. In particular, the Ghanaian case study proves impressively that mobile telephones ‘connect less to the world’ than the globalisation discourse suggests. Mobile phones in Ghana, rather, are used for maintaining family relations. The greatest share of mobile communication represents calls to immediate relatives, and relates to common plans and festivities, or simply assures the communication partners of their mutual attachment. Slater and Kwami (Reference Slater and J.2005) go further in their interpretation, and describe mobile telephones as a means of maintaining or strengthening traditional social networks, in a context where increasing mobility leads to greater spatial distances between family members, resulting in fewer opportunities for personal meetings. Thus, their inquiry contradicts the general hypotheses about mobile phones and globalisation: although mobiles are considered to be devices or at least symbols of global communication, they are used more often than not as means to strengthen local embedding.
Although we agree with the conclusion of the Ghanaian study, which is confirmed by our own findings, we think that it represents a somewhat limited perspective. In contrast to Slater's approach, we look at mobile phones beyond the limited perspective of the mobiles' functions. We believe that it is insufficient to understand mobile phones simply as devices that are ‘domesticated’ in order to serve specific local requirements. This perspective omits the material dimension (Geser Reference Geser2004). In order to describe the cellular phone more thoroughly from the users' perspective, we need to understand it as part of the local material culture. The ‘object character’ goes far beyond the functions of the mobile phone. It relates to mobile phones as a consumer good, and to particular forms of usage, for example as a fashion object (Katz & Sugiyama 2005: 66). From the standpoint of the owner, mobile phones are also a means of expressing social competence.Footnote 6 The mobile phone in its material and cultural aspects is a ‘socially constructed technological system’ (Pinch & Bijker Reference Pinch, W. E., Bijker, Hughes and Pinch1987). We therefore focus here on the most varying contexts of socially recognised usages in Burkina Faso. The mobile phone, as well as the telephone in general (Fischer Reference Fischer, LaFollette and Stine1991), has proved to be a particularly potent case to illuminate the relevance of different localised usages, as the terms ‘domestication’ and ‘appropriation’ indicate. This emphasises the anthropological dimension of technology studies. It is not so much the technology as such that explains the everyday importance, but the usages and the contextualisation to which users put the mobile phone (Oudshoorn & Pinch Reference Oudshoorn, T., Oudshoorn and Pinch2003) that is crucial.
In particular, we take a closer look at the acquisition of mobile phones, and local solutions to the economic challenges that they pose. With respect to Burkina Faso, which is one of the poorest countries in the world, Bruno Jaffré (Reference Jaffré2000) provides valuable information for the macro-level. But our specific approach is focused more on the observable micro-level of social patterns in everyday action and the users' perspective. Our research therefore focuses on participant observation in Ouagadougou, the capital, and several villages in the southern province. This includes talking with phone users, sharing mobile phones, observing negotiations for lending mobiles, recording object histories of mobiles and so on. As far as the rural setting is concerned, information about mobile usage is a partial outcome of a larger research programme on consumption and material possessions, which included household inventories and systematic interviews about the frequency of usage of consumer goods in these households. Furthermore the authors visited workshops of mobile phone repairers and conducted interviews with these experts.Footnote 7
The qualitative information received through participant observation and expert interviews was complemented by quantitative data from a survey among phone card sellers, carried out in September 2006. Our methodological focus on ethnographic approaches explains why we do not focus on macro-level issues, North–South relations or the construction of postcolonial identities, which are nevertheless of undeniable relevance when discussing mobile phones in any region in Africa.
We cannot discuss all the features of everyday usage of mobiles; however, the aspects we deal with in this article show the degree to which ‘cultural appropriation’ transforms the material object and its functions. Some features like SMS and MMS, which are of some, although very limited relevance in countries like Burkina Faso with less than a quarter of its population being literate, are not treated in detail because their use is not yet sufficiently widespread. With the increase in the share of people with reading and writing capacities, the extended functions of newer models of mobiles may gain more relevance.
The overall argument of our article may be understood as a critical comment on the introductory quotation from Georg Simmel: perhaps the culture of the individual has not progressed (as Simmel suggests), but the individual (i.e. the typical phone user in Burkina Faso) has found a way to transform the properties of the ‘extremely refined things’, such that they now fit into the prevalent local requirements and the accepted norms of local society. Thus, our study aims to contribute to the debunking of the myth of the autonomous technical order and to reorient research more towards the social embedding of technology.
ON THE HISTORY OF MOBILE PHONES IN BURKINA FASO
The usage of mobile phones in Burkina Faso began in 1996 with the founding of the first company for mobile phones, TELMOB (Anago Reference Anago2004). In less than ten years, the new technology had penetrated the most remote areas of the country. In 2000 and 2003 two further companies, CELTEL and TELECEL, started to operate in Burkina, each of them attracting more clients every year. By the end of 2004, about 400,000 mobile phone numbers were registered in Burkina Faso (ITU 2006; Sanou Reference Sanou2005). This number corresponds to 4% of the country's population. The boom in mobile phones in one of the poorest countries of the world, where the population struggles to solve the problems of everyday life, requires closer examination. As we show, this exceptional development is determined by the ways in which mobile phones have been adapted to the local conditions of everyday life.
Since Burkina Faso is a country dominated by agriculture, where about three-quarters of the population live in rural areas, mobile phone usage cannot be restricted to towns. Although mobile phone networks initially covered urban areas only, the new technology was immediately extended to rural areas, even to places which officially were not covered by any of the mobile phone companies' networks. In many villages, local people discovered that when they climbed a certain hill or rock, or even a particular tree, mobile phone communication became possible even with very weak mobile network signals.Footnote 8
Once aware of the high appreciation that the new communication technology enjoyed among the population, the companies raced to cover the national territory. Despite the fact that the territory is still not covered completely, company advertisements cite the high level of territorial coverage that they offer as a particular advantage of their product. For some years now, the use of mobile phones has become far more widespread than that of fixed phones. Particularly for areas where fixed phones did not previously exist, this underscores the importance of this new technology.Footnote 9
The rapid adoption of mobile phones seems all the more surprising if viewed against the backdrop of absolute poverty, as in rural areas of Burkina Faso up to 42% of the population live below the internationally recognised poverty level (MED 2004: 15; 2005). Obviously, the mobile phone technology responds to a real communication need, which may explain at least in part the speed with which this very expensive technology was adopted. It is true that making calls from a fixed telephone is less expensive in terms of price per minute. But fixed phones depend on an expensive infrastructure, whereas mobile phones only need one single antenna to cover a comparatively large area. Even the latest landlocked phone technology, using satellite relays for long distances, cannot compete with mobile phones for a very simple reason: electricity is needed for every single telephone, and in Burkina Faso this is still lacking in many rural areas.
In 1996, with TELMOB as the only company, the price of both mobile phones and their monthly fees was extremely high. Only the country's elites could afford this new technology. Only members of the political class, business people or social braggarts used mobile phones at that time. But from 2000, when further companies were licensed to operate in Burkina Faso, competition quickly led to a decline in price to the benefit of customers. The dramatic drop in price partially explains why the mobile phone is so highly appreciated in many countries inspite of the low income level (Vertovec Reference Vertovec2004). Generally speaking, the relative acceptance of mobile phones in Burkina Faso follows more or less the same rhythm as in many other African countries, with the rate of annual increase significantly exceeding that of many more highly developed countries (Sanon Reference Sanon, Beck and Wittmann2004: 316). But more specific answers are needed regarding the question of how people manage to appropriate this technology in one of the poorest countries of the world, even when the economic environment seems to dictate quite different priorities.
MOBILE ECONOMIES: ACQUIRING AND USING TELEPHONES WITHOUT SPENDING MONEY
Since mobile phones were introduced, a new dynamic has developed in the practices related to this device. Young business people from Burkina Faso specialise in the mobile phone trade, and travel to Western and Asian countries to search for cheap mobile phones. They tend to select particular types of phone for import to Burkina Faso. The most important sources for low priced new phones are the Arab Emirates and Dubai (‘low-end-phones’, Barendregt Reference Barendregt, Schulte Nordholt and Hoogenboom2006: 339). Another source providing used and therefore inexpensive phones is France, where even damaged phones are bought and then repaired after arriving in Burkina Faso.Footnote 10 The used phones are locally called ‘good-bye France’, and are much appreciated by people who do not have the means to buy new ones. In order to provide cheap phones, many migrant workers and students transform themselves into occasional phone traders. Some Burkinabé students manage to cover the travel expenses for their holiday trip home through the sale of mobile phones.
Beyond the benefits of these particular trading networks, the local tradition of migrant worker remittances is modified insofar as the returning relatives are now asked to bring mobiles with them as gifts. All these practices show that it is not sufficient to link the acquisition of mobile phones directly to the economic capacity of the people in question. Such an approach would by far underestimate the importance of local strategies to bypass the rules of the market. Thus, for teachers and other people working in the public administration in rural areas, the acquisition of mobile phones was facilitated by collective orders and by a scheme for purchasing by monthly instalments. As mobile phone usage developed into a common practice, more people felt that this new technology had become a useful device for communication, and therefore also an integral part of their social life. For example, people started to exchange mobile phone numbers, even if they did not plan to call the other person in the immediate future. Even fruit and vegetable saleswomen and shoe shiners ask for their customers' numbers.
The absolute necessity to align the contexts of phones with the users' economic capacity applies likewise to the usage and the maintenance of mobile phones. Telephone usage is often submitted to the stingiest of routines, which in this context means in most circumstances to avoid making a call in the first place. Some people manage not to recharge their prepaid telephone account until they risk being cut off by the provider (which is usually the case after three or six months). The units that have to be bought at that moment will only be used up if absolutely necessary. Furthermore, phones with no units are loaned out to people who are ready to buy a phone card and to charge the phone. The borrower may use up all the units, the interest for the owner lies in saving his account and phone number for another three months.
In order to save units, people commonly resort to a practice called ‘flashing’, which means just to dial a number, let it ring once or twice, and then hang up before the person called is able to touch a button. One usually expects to be called back right away. This practice is colloquially called ‘biper’, and may be understood as a particular technique to get in touch with someone without spending any phone units.
Despite the fact that most people claim not to react to this practice in the expected manner, there are exceptions which have to be respected (Kibora Reference Kibora2002). These rare exceptions are related to generally known social obligations and codes. These include the following examples: a friend can be flashed in order to let him know that one has already arrived at the appointed place – yet to be called back is not necessarily expected. An elder brother may flash any of his younger relatives, who must react immediately, because the latter expects to receive some information and, of course, because it is the right of the elder to ask his younger sibling to pay for the call. Whoever receives a flash from his village of origin must react as a matter of urgency by returning the call. Conditions for whether someone should return a call also relate to the economic situation of the person flashing. If someone is known to be experiencing particular hardship, he will receive a call when flashing.
Some people give special instructions to relatives and friends, encouraging them to flash whenever necessary, particularly if these friends have previously been asked for a favour by the owner of the mobile phone. Thus the proposal to flash and be called back may be a way to reciprocate. The practice of flashing relatives and friends is also used when using the fixed phone at the office, if the employee is not allowed to use it for private purposes. Indeed, the exponential increase in costs for telecommunication services since the introduction of mobile phones in Burkina Faso was a primary reason for many enterprises and public administrations to restrict the use of office phones to calling fixed phones only.
One consequence of the limited economic capacity of most mobile phone owners is the high popularity of prepaid phone accounts, which have overtaken the monthly subscriptions which dominated during the initial years. The latter are still in use, but have been adopted exclusively by members of the political class and business people. Today the great majority of people use prepaid accounts. To maintain these, they have to buy phone cards and enter the code given on the card in order to recharge their account.
The expanding business with telephone cards generates new job opportunities for many young unemployed people, who earn their living by selling the cards on the roadside, in bars or in restaurants. Selling cards in one's neighbourhood is also very popular among pupils during their summer holidays. Some of them even manage to earn enough money to help their parents or to pay their school fees on their own. A survey of 50 phone card sellers in Ouagadougou revealed an astonishing level of income,Footnote 11 strongly indicating that selling telephone cards may be considered a profitable business. Some of them even claimed that their monthly income was higher than basic incomes paid by the local administration.Footnote 12 Thus, the mobile phone is also a source of financial redistribution, a mechanism that allows some of the poorest to generate income. Boosted by the growing usage of mobiles, selling telephone cards has become a new business in the country's informal economy.
TECHNICAL ADAPTATIONS
The appropriation of the mobile phone in Burkina Faso is not restricted to its adaptations at the social and economic level. Modifications occur in the technical domain as well, even if this is only possible to a limited degree. One of the most frequent features of this kind of adaptation, which applies to many technical devices in Africa, is the extension of its usage beyond the general life expectancy of the device in question. This particular usage of devices in Africa is best described by the term ‘second life’. Devices acquire a ‘second life’ when they are imported into Africa from France or other European countries. This effect relates to the high esteem associated with used handsets of European provenance. Local patterns of prolonged usage are out of the question for fixed phones, since they are furnished exclusively by the national operator, who also has the monopoly on their maintenance. This means that the introduction of mobile phones gave rise to a new and independent business related to their maintenance.
Many young people try to master the new technology to improve the life expectancy of these apparatuses. Thus, when mobile phones became popular in Burkina Faso, many former repairers of watches, radios and other electronic devices turned to repairing mobile phones. Now they concentrate on fixing broken phones with more or less success. One particular expertise of these young people is the ‘decoding’ of mobile phones, since those bought at cheaply in France are generally ‘coded’ in order to restrict their use to the network of one particular operator. Secondhand phone dealers importing their goods to Burkina Faso soon found a solution to by-pass this ‘coding’. In Ouagadougou as in many other major towns, specialists in decoding have set up store in local shopping centres. By using microcomputers with specialised software they are able to decode any phone within minutes. Convenient? Illegal? Pirated software? The future owner of the second hand mobile phone neither asks nor cares, and the decoding experts are highly respected as they form an integral part of the expanding mobile communications business.
Mobile phone repairers offer a variety of services from the most complex ‘decoding’ to the simple recharging of batteries. Many requests relate to the modification of sound and display. Beyond this, repairers also change broken screens or microphones. In terms of the age and the general condition of the handset, many of these repairs would not be worth the working hours invested. But actually these repairs contribute to prolonging the lifespan of the device, thus making it possible for customers to better amortise their investment. The parts used for these repairs are rarely new, and sometimes the handsets are so old that spare parts are no longer available from the original producer. Repairers in Burkina Faso typically take parts from irreparable phones or modify parts from another brand.Footnote 13 Some of these young entrepreneurs make considerable earnings from their business. They serve the needs of their customers, the phone users, and thereby integrate the new technology more effectively into the existing range of economic means.
MOBILE PHONES IN RURAL AREAS
After arriving in town, as is the case for many new technologies coming from Western societies, the mobile phone conquered rural areas with some delay by making itself indispensable to the population there. At first it was received as an object of pure luxury, and was regarded with mistrust. Rural people associated the ownership of such a phone with the arrogant and showy attitudes of people from town, and alleged that the mobile would further complicate relations between rural and urban people in Burkina Faso. This notwithstanding, rural people would not have refused to own such a device if it were affordable. In the beginning the villagers' perspective fell short of explicit rejection, but the mobile phone was by and large considered as something that did not belong to them or to their way of life.
But, in time, rural people became more pragmatic about the whole issue. With the opening of local branches in the smaller provincial towns and the extension of the mobile networks to rural areas, and thus to places where landlines had never been available, even sceptical villagers came to acknowledge the advantages of the new technology. Even the most critical opponents had to admit that mobile phones might be useful; some no longer hesitated to acquire this new device, in part maybe because it exuded an aura of social prestige. In order to justify their new acquisition some referred to a proverb, stating: ‘it is better to act when a new phenomenon is emerging than simply to surrender’. The mobile allowed villagers to contact relatives anywhere in the country, and to give them news without delay. Thus, people avoid reproaches, such as ‘why didn't you call me on my mobile?’, or ‘because you don't have a mobile, we couldn't inform you in time’.
As about 80% of Burkina Faso's population live in rural areas, most family networks include members in the cities as well as in villages. This fact explains the particular importance of communication between towns and villages. Historically, villages were the places where children and the elderly were cared for. Even today, in the context of increasing poverty, the village retains its reputation as a place of ultimate security. Many parents send their children to relatives in their village of origin, where life is less expensive. But even when the economic background is not so very difficult, the village preserves its relevance as a place to worship at the tombs of the ancestors and to receive their spiritual protection. Many religious concepts of the origin of life (of the members of the lineage) and of well-being revolve around the ideology of the place, a place that should be visited from time to time by all members of the parental group. Of even greater importance is the expression of respect towards the relatives still living in the village by keeping in touch with them. But every trip to the village can become expensive, not only in terms of travel expenses, but also because people from towns can hardly refuse the requests of the villagers. So townspeople discovered in communication with mobiles a partial substitute for visits to the village, and thus a means to reduce the economic challenge posed by their siblings in the village. These findings are valid not only for Burkina Faso, but are also confirmed by recent research in Jamaica.Footnote 14
However, in the light of most rural people's economic circumstances, the acquisition of a mobile phone poses quite a challenge. The aim of these people is to appropriate them basically ‘without spending a penny’. In order to do so they develop several strategies. The first people who were ready to adopt the new technology in rural areas bought secondhand phones. Other people receive an old mobile phone or an outdated model as a gift from their relatives.Footnote 15 The phone's maintenance, however, remains a challenge. Sometimes the owners of handsets negotiate the opportunity to recharge the battery using the electricity provided at the local dispensary by solar panels. Others store old car batteries for this purpose. Some regularly take the mobile phone to the principal market in the region, where specialised shops offer to recharge phones or car batteries. These practices show how much the use of mobile phones in rural areas differs from the urban context. What motivates the adaptations is the common need to maintain social relations between family members.
Some younger people in the villages have even started to run rural communication centres based on their mobile phones.Footnote 16 These new rural communication centres imitate the existing urban communication centres (‘télécentres’), which were based on a fixed phone. Although accountability is more difficult with mobile phones, the ingenious owners of mobile communication centres manage to request the level of remaining units after each call and to calculate the user's fee accordingly.
There is one particularly salient reason for mutual concern, arrangements and the need for communication: the death of a relative in the village. This requires the immediate return of all relatives to the village. Consequently, whoever has a mobile phone in the village, the teacher of the primary school, or the health officer at the dispensary, is asked to make the necessary calls to the relatives in town.Footnote 17 The obligation for mobile owners to accept such requests may be understood as a burdsen. But teachers, who generally live as foreigners in the village community, understand these moments as opportunities to engage in reciprocal obligations with the villagers. They allow the villagers to benefit from their phone, as in other circumstances they expect the young men from the village to weed their fields. Nevertheless, the phone owners are sensible to the fact that their mobile plays a different role in the village, compared to the town, where one's mobile is only handed over to close friends. It is precisely this pragmatic approach to the ‘shared use’ of mobile phones in cases of emergency that convinced many people in rural areas of this technology's usefulness.
THE INTRODUCTION OF TELEPHONES IN RURAL AREAS BY DEVELOPMENT AGENCIES
It is not astonishing to find that several initiatives have sought to foster the introduction of communication technologies in rural areas in Burkina Faso. As in many other countries, UNESCO started a project in Burkina Faso in the early 1990s implementing ‘Communal Centres for Telecommunication’. Through this initiative a good number of villages were equipped with a telephone and a solar panel providing electricity, and in each village a local committee was put in charge of the maintenance of these installations. However, more than ten years later, only one village (Tansila, in the northwestern province of Kossi) still manages to maintain the infrastructure.
Despite the disappointing outcome, this first experience as well as other initiatives undertaken by the government showed that there was a real demand for telephone communication in rural areas. Very often the reasons for the failure of technology are related to its complexity or the difficulty in replacing devices when necessary (Anago Reference Anago2004).Footnote 18 The problem is not the acceptance of the communication facility as such. This becomes particularly clear when one looks at the activities of the Association for the Development of Postal Services and Telecommunication (CSDPTT; http://www.csdptt.org/). Recently, the founder of this non-governmental organisation, Bruno Jaffré, summarised the results of his surveys on telecommunication in rural Burkina Faso (Sankara & Jaffré Reference Jaffré2005: 235ff.), noting that the rural population entirely supports the proposition to install telecommunication devices in the villages. Jaffré reports from the discussion, where these main points were stipulated, explaining the urgent need to introduce this new technology:
• People need to communicate with the hospital or the nearest dispensary.
• People want to communicate with their relatives living in town.
• People want to facilitate commercialisation of their local agricultural products, particularly by contacting wholesalers of their fruits and vegetables.
The common basis of these points of interest is communication with people living in other places. This is the most banal and elementary aspect of telecommunication, and should be recognised as a basic need of people in rural areas.Footnote 19 This is precisely the aim of the CSDPTT (Jaffré Reference Jaffré2005; Benanamrane et al. Reference Benanamrane, J. and F.-X.2005).
COMMUNICATION, ORAL SOCIETY AND MOBILE PHONES
There is no society without communication. The exchange of ideas is paired with mutual assistance and the exchange of goods, which together maintain and reinforce social relations. These systems of obligation, which are borne out of mutual exchanges, require a concerted effort. For societies that have developed a particular culture of orality, as is the case in most areas in Burkina Faso, the importance of the spoken word remains critical, in spite of all the transformations due to contact with Western societies. One important principle deriving from the particular tradition of orality is the hierarchisation of speech.Footnote 20
People in Burkina Faso today still have to respect the rule that ‘you may not say whatever you like to whoever you like’. The communicative dimension of social stratification and hierarchisation is a universal feature of pragmatics regarding the principles of how to address and talk with other persons (Brown & Levinson Reference Brown and S. C.1987). The expression of relative status has been particularly observed in African languages, where complex structures of greetings are still a feature of everyday communication practice. As Sheila Dauer (Reference Dauer1984: 331) notes, greetings have to be initiated by the communication partner of inferior status. The expression of respect is further articulated through a routinised procedure of greeting. Greetings are also a topic of negotiations of social status. Greetings may be flattened out and distinctive forms of greeting may be disregarded by younger members of the society, as has been shown for East African languages (McGivney Reference McGivney1993; Yahya-Othman Reference Yahya-Othman1995). The same applies for West African languages, such as Yoruba and Hausa, where competing ranking systems, such as social status vs. solidarity, lead to adapting the greeting procedures (McIntyre Reference McIntyre1980; Oyetade Reference Oyetade1994). All these peculiarities indicate the specific status of orality in African languages. Based on these observations, we characterise the societies in Burkina Faso as ‘oral societies’. We thereby do not mean that people in Burkina Faso do not have more or less intensive experiences with written documents, implicating the whole range from administrative documents (family cards, birth certificates) to personal letters (for illiterates by engaging a professional letter writer), which have since colonial times been the principal means of communicating with absent family members.Footnote 21 Nevertheless, oral communication has a much more important role in everyday life. This applies not only quantitatively, but also with regard to the respect shown to the spoken word, as shown by the above mentioned publications on greetings in Africa.Footnote 22
Such peculiarities provide important arguments in favour of mobile phone usage. Obviously, this new device makes it much easier to communicate in the ‘right manner’, without involving intermediate persons who may misunderstand the original intentions. To a limited degree this applies even for the specific rhythm of the extended greetings. The ability to argue and convey new arguments while the communication partner is listening, is a feature that goes beyond communication by written documents. Even if we concede that greetings have to be abbreviated (compared to direct oral communication or letters), because of the high costs of mobile telecommunication per minute, people however appreciate the advantage of speaking directly with their counterparts.Footnote 23
Although Burkinabé societies have experienced various modern modes of communication, such as fixed phones (restricted to the towns) and writing letters, it is worth following the thoughts of Sylvestre Ouédraogo (Reference Ouédraogo2003), who chose the most divergent communication systems in Burkina Faso as contrasting topics of his reflections: the speaking drums and the mobile phone. It may be difficult to find anywhere in the world a more rapid change from one to the other than in Burkina Faso. Ouédraogo's point is that there are more similarities between speaking drums and mobile phones than appears at a first glance. The Burkinabé philosopher relates McLuhan's theory of the ‘global village’ to personal observations in his home country. He concludes from his reasoning that there is a high chance for a successful social embedding of the mobile in the oral societies of Burkina Faso.
The parallels worked out by Ouédraogo go beyond the rules of direct speech and the immediate response of communication partners. In particular, Ouedraogo hints at the very similar social structure underlying the usage of drums and mobile phones. Following local traditions in many Burkinabé villages, the traditional instruments are in the possession of experts who play them. Whoever needed to announce a death or other socially important news, had to ask the owner of the instrument to transmit the messages for him. This is precisely what happens today with regard to the few mobile phones in the village: if someone experiences a death in his family, he goes to the mobile phone owner, and asks to call the number of his relatives in town or abroad, so that the extended family can be informed. As already mentioned mobile owners will not refuse this request. From a Western viewpoint, the lack of privacy might be regarded as an important obstacle to communication in this context. But, as the comparison with the speaking drums shows, privacy is much less important than directness, which is at the basis of the associative link, worked out so thoughtfully by Ouedraogo. This explains very well, why writing letters (or ordering other people to write them), although less expensive, has so quickly been replaced by using mobile phones.
Thus, the mobile telephone in the village does not create a new logic of social order, but the patterns of its usage are made up according to the social norms of the rural society. With respect to the patterns described, a comparison with the introduction of the donkey cart further illuminates the social contexts. At first, the appearance of the donkey cart in the village was no more than an object of curiosity. But once the cart was loaned to whoever needed it for transporting the harvest from the fields to the compound, it was recognised as a socially relevant feature, and its owners benefited from an increase in social esteem. This may be called “social embedding of the innovation”; it applies to the mobile phones as well.
So far we have highlighted why the mobile phone was so quickly accepted for communication in urban as in rural contexts. But, last not least, there is another reason why the rural population feels the imperative to adopt mobile phones, which is related to notion of being already subjected to the violence of social change and globalisation. This imagined association between the endangering effects of globalisation (social change, disinterest of young people to make their living in the village) and its benefits (direct communication over distance) leads to the local perception that adopting the new technology is an imperative. Therefore access to mobile communication is felt as a peremptory necessity, if rural people are not ready to accept that the decomposition of their identities and social structure will accelerate.
The unexpectedly rapid process of domestication and appropriation just described seems to indicate that both rural and urban populations in Burkina Faso accepted and adopted the mobile phone, as if they were already expecting it. The mobile phone found its place in this society without causing any major upheaval in existing cultural patterns.Footnote 24
In this section we have explored two arguments for the astonishing readiness of rural people to appropriate the new technology. The first is rooted in the norms of oral society and the social embedding of mobiles. The second is not so much related to local tradition, but merely associated with expectations of the future and the intention to keep up with a globalising world.
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The aim of this essay is twofold: first, on the theoretical level it shows the utility of the terms ‘domestication’ and ‘cultural appropriation’ for understanding difference in the usage of mobiles between African societies and other places of the world. In this framework we stress the fact that mobiles may not be reduced to the functionality of communication, but must be understood also as a material objects with a particular social and economic embedding. Second, at the descriptive level, it aims to improve our knowledge of mobile phone usage in Burkina Faso, especially in rural contexts. We now summarise how the theoretical approach helps to interpret the documented empirical aspects of mobiles in Burkina Faso.
To illuminate the concept of domestication, we have focused on three domains of appropriation of the mobile phone. The first domain concerns its social integration. As we have shown, this is the soft side of the new communication technology, and we may go so far as to say that the mode of communication fits very well into the previously existing priorities of the ‘oral societies’ in the rural contexts of Burkina Faso. In all likelihood the mobile phone companies do not benefit substantially from extending their networks to the rural areas of Burkina Faso. But the need for members of families divided between the villages and the urbans centres to communicate led companies nevertheless to invest heavily in improving the mobile network coverage in rural Burkina Faso.
The notions of the oral society and the hierarchy of speech in oral communication are highly relevant to the usage of the mobile phone, regarding not only who may be calling whom, but also whether a person reacts to flashing or not and, last but not least, giving space for proper greetings and the directness in exchanges with communication partners. This applies particularly in a context where more than 70% of the population is illiterate, so that phone calls are a unique chance to receive messages directly.
The second domain concerns the technology of the mobile phones. We have shown that villagers exhibit an inventive attitude in extending the scope of the mobile network signals when they climb hills in order to make a call. Furthermore, people creatively look for sources to charge their phone batteries, for example through solar panels or car batteries. Although many workshops claim to repair mobiles, the technological domain can be modified only to a very limited degree, making the ‘hardware’ of the technological system accessible for few changes only. Therefore, the most relevant feature of the technological appropriation is ‘decoding’, which annuls the intended regulations of the mobile companies and therefore may be regarded as a kind of ‘freeing’ of the mobile phone.
The third and most important domain concerns the economic aspects. This is also the most problematic aspect of the new technology. The ‘zero budget strategy’ of many mobile phone owners requires considerable effort. In this context, appropriation means to create new modes of using the phone, including flashing, sharing a phone, organising a communication centre, or even not using a phone until the last days before the account expires.
But of even greater importance is the interaction between the social and the economic domain. The acquisition of used phones, mobile phone sharing, and flashing are practices that can only be applied if there is a reliable and common appreciation about how to deal with such requests. All members of a community must have a mutual understanding of who should accept a financial charge. Many of the peculiarities of the use of mobile phones in Burkina Faso revolve precisely around this interaction of economic and social aspects. Perhaps it is one of the strengths of the rural societies in Burkina Faso that the mutual exchange of assistance and the supportive behaviour helps people to overcome many problems caused by economic shortcomings.Footnote 25 This particular ‘socialness’ (Riggins Reference Riggins and Riggins1994) would then be simultaneously a pathway for appropriating the mobile phone as well as a strategy to master the related economic challenges. With Michel de Certeau (Reference Certeau1980), we can claim the power of everyday life to be at the origin of the people's capacity to make a highly specific use of mobiles, while coping with permanent economic shortcomings. We may learn from the practices in Burkina Faso that economic criteria do not suffice to explain why local societies are able to both adopt and adapt to the new communication technology to such a high degree. In spite of Africa's current marginalisation in the globalisation process, Africans manage to appropriate mobile phones, to use them in particular modes, and thereby, even to encounter their marginal status (Nyamnjoh Reference Nyamnjoh2004: 53). Thus, the mobile phone has been successfully domesticated by people in Burkina Faso to an extent that its technological features are exploited precisely to the level that is useful in the local context.
