Mobile4Bad

In a recent article in the Chicago Tribune, Paul Salopek starts off by saying that Africa, being the world’s poorest continent, is also its least wired. That may be true, but we are likely the most connected unwired people you ever met.

And mobile phones have helped take these connections to the next level.

There’s no denying that the mobile phone has revolutionized Africa. In some other parts of the world a mobile phone is just a mobile phone is just a mobile phone. Not so here.

In Kenya, I can store funds on my phone and transfer or liquidate these as necessary. It is also the primary internet surfing device for a good number of people I know. In addition, the mobile phone can be used as a social networking and newsgathering tool. Services such as Kazi560 and Ushahidi.com are to be applauded for catering to, and harnessing the power of, the bottom of the pyramid respectively.

Unfortunately, what can be harnessed for good can equally be exploited for sinister purposes.

Regarding the escalating violence in Kenya, the ICRC spokesman in the country, one Bernard Barret is quoted as saying that rumours are being spread by mobile phone text messages predicting imminent attacks by one group or another and that this is heightening tensions.

It’s difficult to attach a positive or negative value to these messages collectively.

If they’re true, then they serve as a useful warning, enabling those who are due to be attacked to protect themselves or to flee.

If they’re not true, on the other hand, they cause unnecessary panic and might lead to those receiving them planning and executing attacks of their own in order to pre-empt the attack of the perceived enemy. And if you think this is farfetched, then take another look at the Akiwumi Report according to which which some people defended their acts of aggression by saying that they had received word that they were due to be attacked and that therefore they were merely being offensive in their own defense.

Unfortunately in this current state of unrest, it is difficult to distinguish between fact and falsehood in the flood of text messages filling our phones each day. The Nation Media Group recently had to officially deny claims, spread primarily through text messages, that their vans were being used to ferry guns to farflung parts of the country. Halftruths, untruths and propaganda spread like wildfire. One person sends it to five, those five send it to twenty, those twenty send it to one hundred, and so it spreads.

Worse though, are text messages that are unrepentantly filled with hatred and subversion. These became increasingly more frenetic in the days leading up to last year’s general election, and reached a climax after the ECK botched up the tallying of votes and a disputed government was hurriedly sworn in. These are the text messages that preach a radical and dangerous message. These are the messages that tell me all that is good about me on account of my ethnic identity and all that is wrong with the Other on account of their ethnic roots. These are the sometimes hysterical text messages that justify hardline stances and violence visited upon the Other simple because they are Other. These are the text messages that call on the recipient to act in a certain way on the basis of their ethnicity, and further, to regard the Other or act upon Other in a certain way because of their ethnicity.

What makes these subversive messages spread by mobile phone most sinister though, is the ability to select for audience.

It is one thing to broadcast subversive messages on Radio as was the case in Rwanda, and is alarmingly the case with some vernacular radio stations in Kenya.

It is an entirely different thing to send these messages to a carefully selected list of people on your contact list who will in turn send them on to their own select list of people so that the message spreads like a virus but catches only people who answer to certain ‘characteristics.’

It is more dangerous because there is more stealth to it. It is not done in the open, it is done in secret, making it harder to put an end to. In addition, the dissemination instrument is not situated in one central place that can be clamped down on easily. Rather, every mobile phone in this country is a potential dissemination instrument, making it nigh impossible to crackdown on the proliferators of these messages.

I’m very afraid that mobile phones will be for Kenya what Radio was for Rwanda. I really look forward to being proved wrong.