By Fie Velghe

Abstract

The high uptake of mobile phones in the developing world has instigated studies on the impact of the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) on poverty reduction programs and other programs that would benefit the poorest and most excluded sections of the global population. It has created new hopes as to how mobile phones would be able to close the so-called global digital gap that exists between the developed and the developing world and transform the fortunes of the poor. As ICTs are always embedded in social and economic realities and practices which deeply influence, define, and restrict people‟s mobile phone use, one should however be cautious in transporting and applying findings and studies focusing on the created opportunities of mobile phone use from one continent, country or even society to another.

This article focuses on mobile phone use of middle-aged women, living in Wesbank, a post-apartheid township in Cape Town. By highlighting the main characteristics of the community (poverty, unemployment, crime, multilingualism and migration) we discuss the influences of these characteristics of „a life in Wesbank‟ on mobile phone use. Although the adoption of a mobile phone creates diverse opportunities with regards to connectivity, safety and re-imagination of the self, poverty proved to put a major constraint on the full use of the potentials.

Keywords: ICT, communication, mobile phone, South-Africa, Cape Town, globalization

How to quote (APA):  Velghe, F. (2011). Deprivation, Distance and Connectivity: The adaptation of mobile phone use to a life in Wesbank, a post-Apartheid township in South Africa. (Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies; No. 6).

Read the full working paper here: Deprivation, Distance and Connectivity: The adaptation of mobile phone use to  a life in Wesbank, a post-Apartheid  township in South Africa