PEOPLE speak about Africa as "the mobile continent" so frequently that it has become a cliché. People throw the phrase around as if it explains everything, without interrogating what Africans do with their mobile devices.One attempt to change that comes courtesy of technology research outfit World Wide Worx, which has published the results of its survey of 3,500 mobile phone users in five of Africa’s major markets — SA, Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana and Uganda.The survey reveals unsurprisingly that there has been a rise of internet access via phones, the potential demise of Nokia and, a little more surprisingly, the continued appeal of BlackBerry.According to World Wide Worx, internet browsing via phones now stands at 40% across all five markets, with 51% of respondents in Ghana and 47% in Nigeria reporting that they use their phones to access the internet. SA lags behind at 40% and Kenya (34%) and Uganda (29%) are slowest on the uptake.Despite a smaller percentage of its people using their...

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