CELL OUT!

Now he talks to his mother every day. And once a week, with a simple new feature in African cellphones, he uses a text message to transfer five minutes of airtime to her phone to make sure she can always call him.

As surely as the light bulb and the automobile before them, the cellphone and text messaging are radically changing the way people live in the developing world. In widespread use for about five years in much of Africa, technology long taken for granted by the world8217;s rich has made life easier, safer and more prosperous for the world8217;s poor.

For the first time, millions of Africans are able to communicate easily with people who are beyond shouting distance. In cities, cellphones are becoming a basic tool of e-commerce, allowing consumers to transfer money with a few presses on the keypad.

People call a doctor, mechanic or police officer instead of walking miles to find one. News of births, deaths and illnesses instantly reaches the furthest corners of the jungle, where mothers like Iyombe8217;s struggle with the concept of their children8217;s voices emerging from a little plastic box with buttons.

8220;Before, if you had a sick baby in the middle of the night, he could easily die,8221; Iyombe said. 8220;Now you can call somebody to help.8221;

Worldwide, there are more than 2.4 billion cellphone users, with more than 1,000 new customers added every minute, according to industry analysts. About 59 percent of users are in developing countries, making cellphones the first telecommunications technology in history to have more users there than in the developed world.

Cellphone usage in Africa is growing faster than in any other region and jumped from 63 million users two years ago to about 152 million today, according to David Pringle, a spokesman for the GSM Association, a trade group that represents cellular companies whose customers account for 80 percent of the global total.

Few places are growing faster than Congo, which has 3.2 million cellphone customers and just 20,000 conventional land lines. At least 8,000 new cellphone customers sign up each day here; the number of users has increased more than tenfold in the past five years.

When one of Congo8217;s first cellphone networks opened in 1999, it had capacity for 4,000 customers, but 30,000 people lined up outside the office demanding a phone, said Gilbert Nkuli, of Vodacom Congo, the largest of the five cellphone companies competing here.

Africa has attracted multimillion-dollar investments from the world8217;s major cellphone companies, including Nokia and Vodafone. Vodacom Congo is co-owned by Vodafone and a South Africa-based company, while Celtel, the second-largest provider in Congo, is owned by a Netherlands-based company.

The two operators have built about 700 cellphone towers across Congo. Vodacom8217;s Nkuli estimated that 70 pc of the country8217;s 60 million people now live in areas with cellphone coverage.

8220;People would rather be without a shirt and trousers,8221; Nkuli said, 8220;and they8217;d rather go for days without food, instead of not having a phone.8221;

Down a rutted dirt road on the tattered outskirts of Kinshasa, Iyombe, 36, sat in the tiny two-room house he shares with his wife. He had been hoping for a career as an electrician but couldn8217;t find a job. The Congolese economy had been run into the ground by three decades of corrupt dictatorial rule by Mobuto Sese Seko. Then, after Mobutu was overthrown in 1997, the country dissolved into a war that has left 4 million people dead.

Amid all the despair, Iyombe spotted something new and promising: people carrying cellphones. The more he looked, the more he saw his future in the little gadgets. So he saved and borrowed, spending 500 for his first phone the average price has since come down to about 40, and started charging people to make calls.

In Kinshasa8217;s noisy street markets, thousands of people sit at little wooden benches with signs that say appel French for call. They keep one or two 8212; sometimes four 8212; cellphones in their laps. They buy airtime in bulk from phone companies, then charge customers a small premium to make calls.

At his little stand, Iyombe said, he sells hundreds of calls a week and makes a profit of about 20 8212; a fantastic wage in a country where most people live on 1 a day. Iyombe pays rent for an aunt and school fees for two nephews. 8220;I love my work,8221; he said, wearing the bright red T-shirt of Celtel.

A large part of Iyombe8217;s business is transferring airtime for his customers. They give him cash, and he transfers the minutes from his phone to wherever the customer wants them sent. The transfer takes only a few seconds: Iyombe needs only to enter the amount of airtime and the phone number of the person receiving it. Cellphone companies have added that function to phones in the past year.

Iyombe said many of his customers transfer airtime so that family members in the countryside can resell it. Customers in Kinshasa send airtime to a brother or parent in a distant village, who then sets up under a shady tree and acts as a human phone booth. They sell calls on their phone and earn enough cash to feed their families.

In places where there is little or no electricity 8212; which means most of Congo 8212; entrepreneurs set up small diesel-powered generators and connect plug boards with 30 sockets. People plug in their phones to charge for a couple of hours for about 30 cents.

Iyombe spoke sitting in the larger room of his house, which is just big enough for a bed 8212; and a television he bought in a cellphone transaction. He punched a few buttons on his cellphone and transferred 150 into the shop8217;s bank account. The shopkeeper received a text message confirmation of the transaction and Iyombe walked out with his new TV. He paid three more 50 installments via cellphone.

Conveniences such as laptops, Internet access, ATMs and credit cards are rare or nonexistent in Congo, so entrepreneurs are devising ways to use cellphones to serve the same functions.

Iyombe is one of about 25,000 Congolese subscribers to Celpay, a company that offers Internet banking through cellphones. Celpay customers make a cash deposit into their Celpay account and can access their account, transfer money or pay bills.

Dozens of businesses, including gas stations and grocery stores, now allow customers to pay for goods through Celpay. The company that distributes Coca-Cola and Heineken beer also uses the system to collect payment, which means drivers no longer have to carry a safe full of cash on their trucks and constantly worry about bandits.