Balancing Act ( Issue No 452 1st May 2009) Carries an interesting story on the growth on mobile phone usage acrosss Africa. for exampl, By the end of 2008, South Africa had 1.35 million Internet subscribers, of which, according to World Wide Worx, 794,000 were wireless Internet subscribers and 588,000 were ADSL subscribers. Even discounting fixed wireless subscribers, there are more mobile Internet subscribers than fixed.

For the case of Uganda, UCC's year end figures for Uganda showed 214,293 active mobile Internet accounts up from 166,621 at the end of Q3, 2008. Compared to? 22,000 fixed line subscribers. In addition to that, Ugandans sent US$39.4 million worth of Text messages last year.

The key question from Balancing Act for Uganda is "so why can't they use their mobile to send e-mails instead?" Balancing Act thinks the answer lies in the simplicity of the SMS interface.

The full story on Africa's rapid mobile Internet growth, can be found at Balancing Act website .