Mobile telecommunications

The Cellphone Wars: Part 3

It was the middle of the dry season. The sun was hot, life was slow, and thrilling rumors were circulating in the Gambia about a new cellphone company. These rumors were made up of hushed, fragmentary words whispered in back rooms all over the country - words like: "brothers", and "blood feud", and "fight to the death". As the weeks progressed, the rumors started to get a little less amorphous, and even began to resemble certain facts in the real world: a certain building, made largely of glass, on Kairaba Avenue (situated about two minutes down from the Africell building); large truck-fuls of boxed equipment delivered to this building in broad daylight; page after page of job ads in the papers. The job ads gave a name to the company: Comium. The rumors gave a backstory: the founder of Africell - the rumors ran - had a brother with whom he had originally begun the venture. Once, they had been friends.

The Cellphone Wars: Part 2

Marketing in The Gambia can be roughly divided into two epochs: the pre-Africell period (also known as the "stick a few billboards on the Banjul-Serekunda highway, do a few spots before the one-o-clock news on rajo gambia, hope we get noticed" period), and the post-Africell ("keep throwing everything you have at the wall - some of it will invariably stick, and even if it doesn't you'll at least get noticed") one. When Africell first opened up shop, they had the unenviable position of having to dislodge a firmly established market leader, and convince thousands of users to switch phone lines (with all the headaches that a change of numbers entails*). They reacted in (what would soon come to be regarded as) typical Africell style: throw enough marketing resources at a problem, and it'll go away.

All businesses are set up with one goal in mind: to get you, the customer, to hand over your hard-earned cash to them, for assorted goods and/or services.

The Gambian Cellphone Wars: Part 1

In the beginning, there were no cellphones.

Back then, the only way to talk to someone was either on a land-phone, yelling at them through the fence that separated you (if you were neighbors), or walking - running if they owed you money - over to their house. (If they were mobile at this time then you were pretty much out of luck - you did this complicated thing where you first called their house, then their grandmother's house, then their best friend's, then their girlfriend's, each time just missing them, until you gave up and just went out on the streets to see if maybe you could meet them face to face).