awayonmybike: Week 10 - The invention that changed Africa?

As I moved through the towns of southern Tanzania one common feeling each night as I fell asleep in my tent was the sweat rolling off me. After a week or more of this I decided it was time to find somewhere cooler and did what the colonials did in their time, and headed for the hills. I'd heard of a small hill town called Loshoto that the Germans, as the pre World War 1 colonial masters of this part of the continent, had considered as the capital of German East Africa. After several days, and nearly a thousand kilometres of flat straight roads along the plains the ride upto the hill station proved a joy, 32 kilometres of unadulterated bend swinging as I climbed a 1000 metres - never mind the complete lack of crash barriers and the usual chaos on the road, it was a fantastic ride and brought a big smile to my face.

The town was equally pleasing small and compact and with a largely unrestored pre WW1 hotel whose grounds I camped in and whose bar I spent the night.

Main Street Loshoto

Market time

And this is the main bus station, always the noisiest place in town

And not much quieter at my campsite that night - soon after I arrived an overland tour truck rolled up and disgorged 20 people

It was at the hotel that I had the conversation about the invention mentioned in the title. My informant was a German who had moved to Tanzania in 1973 and he was referring to the mobile phone. He recalled that when he arrived it had taken 3 months to organise his first overseas phone call back to Europe, that it hardly improved for twenty years and that was typical for most of Africa where there were minimal land line networks beyond the major city centres. Then the mobile system started to arrive and suddenly outlying areas started to be connected. Now in 2016 it seems to be everywhere, wherever you are if you look around there is a mobile transmission tower visible somewhere on a hill top, even the smallest village has a shop selling air time and another shop offering charging facilities (in the more remote villages via a solar panel). In his argument this has brought the information revolution in a way much more profound than the superficial way we consider our mass consumption in the developed world, for it had allowed farmers in the remotest village to now find out what his crop is really worth, what the weather forecast is and the like - combine this with a population that is young and an enthusiastic adopters and you have a profound effect that is hard for an outsider to understand. Having looked around and seen just how pervasive the mobile system and is usage is I'm inclined to agree with him.

Loshoto is locally famous for the hikes you can do in the area, so I took a day off the bike and did one with a guide. Six hours of walking tested me out - but some of the views were spectacular.