Small Businesses, Mobile phones

George Obulutsa writes about the impact of cellphones on small businesses, "...He is among thousands of Kenyans, many of them poor, who have taken advantage of the phenomenal mobile expansion to ease the way small businesses operate.The boom has underpinned activity in the small business sector, which employs most workers in the nation of 32 million people which is east Africa's largest economy...Last year, the sector created about 437,900 new jobs, according to the government's 2005 Economic Survey.Outside his small, wooden shop at the entrance of a Nairobi market, Theuri uses the phone to take work orders and call around shopping for goods instead of wasting time moving across the city as he used to do...The community payphone -- known in local Swahili as "simu ya jamii" -- has helped bring telecommunications to those who cannot afford to own a handset...",Reuters.
Via textually.org