TOW #20 (Written)- Reading This on A Computer? Then you (probably) don't live in Africa

Reading This on A Computer? Then You (probably) Don't Live in Africa by Milena Veselinovic and Brandom Clements first pulled me in because of the title. It is true that I'm on a computer and not currently living in Africa, but that title seemed a like stereotypical to me. I mean, Africa is a whole continent, with many, many countries in it, which I know because I had to memorize them all last year in history class for extra credit I really did not need, and it seemed awfully like a blanket statement, even if the (probably) was added in there. So though the title put me off a little, I continued to read, and it turns out the article was talking about how more and more people in Africa are using mobile phones to access the internet as opposed to computers. The reasoning is that many poorer countries in Africa didn't have the resources for many computers in the 90's and 2000's when computering was taking off, so they skipped that part and fast forwarded to phones, which are basically mini computers now. My question is, what about tablets, which are crosses between computers and phones.

The next thing that interested me in this article was the app company start ups that are capitalizing on this mobile phone trend. The article cited examples such as M-Pesa, a money transferring apps, and mPedigree, to check if the medicine you are receiving are real or not. These new apps are showing how people in African are taking a trend from America and western countries and utilizing it for their own advantages, because really, how many Americans would need the app Farmerline, which gives you farming tips? So really, when I thought the article was perpetuating a harmful stereotype of all of Africa being technology barren, it was showing how more advanced the continent as a whole is becoming. I still think that they could stop classifying it as all of Africa though. I mean, how would the German feel if we looped them in with the Greek? (A stereotypically hardworking country vs a stereotypically not hard working country, if you couldn’t tell.)