/ 12 July 2009

Cellphone repairmen thrive in Burkina market

Tongs in one hand, soldering iron in the other, Moumouni Tiemtore draws sparks from the dismantled carcass of a cellphone. “It’s a circuit fault,” he says. “Come back tomorrow.”

A former medical student and accountant, Tiemtore, known as Mouni, turned instead to cellphone repairs — a nice earner in Burkina Faso, where, as in much of Africa, the sector is booming.

Tinkering away at his stall in Ouagadougou’s main market, the 34-year-old can earn 15 000 Central African francs (about $32) a day — about half the average monthly salary in Burkina Faso.

His neighbour Ibrahim Soukoundou said he gave up his old job as a clock maker to repair cellphones. “The clock business isn’t working like it used to,” he said. “We’re trying to change.”

A study published last month said that cellphone subscriptions in Africa rose by 41% in 2008, far outstripping the number of fixed line users there.

The study by the UN Economic Commission for Africa, the African Development Bank and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said investment in Africa’s telecom industry remained unabated despite the economic slowdown, with international providers set to increase their presence there.

Another survey by business consultancy Ernst & Young said the African market for cellphones has shown the “fastest growth rate in the world” since 2002, expanding by almost half.

The surge was driven by “a boom in a raw materials and the increased liberalisation of markets,” said Serge Thiemele, who heads the African sector of the Global Telecommunication Centre, behind the Ernst & Young study.

To cash in on the boom, Google last month unveiled a new service to provide information via SMS to cellphone users in Africa, where cellphones are prevalent but Internet penetration is low.

Google noted that Africa has the world’s highest cellphone growth rate and that cellphone use on the continent is six times higher than internet penetration.

In Mouni’s West African home state, the number of subscribers to the three cellphone operators has multiplied by 100 in eight years to about 2,5-million. Now stalls in the market where he works do a roaring trade fixing batteries, ear pieces and overheating handsets.

The telecom regulator Artel says the cellphone sector has directly created 1 800 jobs since 2007 and “tens of millions” indirectly, spawning shops selling top-up cards as well as repair services such as Mouni’s.

He compares his lucrative new trade with the medical disciplines he studied at Ouagadougou University. “To repair a mobile phone you have to open it… You have to operate,” he says. “You could call it mobile surgery.” – AFP