Brower Mobile Phones in Mozambique

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DOI: 10.1177/097172180901500106
2010 15: 135 Science Technology Society
Roland Brouwer
Maputo City
Mobile Phones in Mozambique : The Street Trade in Airtime in
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Science, Technology & Society 15:1 (2010): 135154
SAGE Publications Los Angeles/London/New Delhi/Singapore/Washington DC
DOI: 10.1177/097172180901500106
Mobile Phones in Mozambique: The Street
Trade in Airtime in Maputo City
ROLAND BROUWER
Introduction
ACCORDING TO THE United Nations Development Programme (UNDP 2006),
Mozambique is one of the ten least developed countries of the world. Yet,
cellular phones have washed over the country as a tsunami. About 17 per
cent of its 20.5 million inhabitants have now access to this technology
(Brouwer and Brito 2008; National Bureau of Statistics 2008). The speed
with which mobile phones has been adoptedfrom a mere 7500 in 1997
to about 3.5 million clients in 2007points at the extraordinary capacity
of these companies to penetrate deeply in a country that is characterised
by a weak physical and commercial infrastructure.
Mozambique is not the only poor nation where mobile phones ap-
parently close the digital divide. The number of users has grown worldwide
but the least developed countries show the highest growth rates (Scott et al.
2004). The rapid growth of the number of users has spurred a ow of
Roland Brouwer is a Senior lecturer at the Faculty of Agronomy and Forest Engineering,
Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, Maputo, Mozambique. E-mail: r.brouwer@tvcabo.
co.mz
Acknowledgements: Words of gratitude to Valdo da Costa for doing the survey interviews,
and to Ldia Brito and Mrio Falco for commenting on the questionnaire and a rst
draft of the article. The study is one of the six contributions of the Mozambican team to
the international research project, ResIST: Researching Inequality through Science and
Technology. ResIST is a project of the Citizens and Governance in a Knowledge-Based
Society priority of the European Commissions Sixth Framework Programme.
136 Roland Brouwer
studies highlighting the benets of this technology. Many authors (for
example, Coyle 2005; Donner 2008; Over 2008; Srivastava 2008) draw
attention to the impact of mobile phones on economic growth and income.
Rhett Butler (2005), in a web item called Cell Phones May Help Save
Africa, suggests that these simple instruments may be the best tool for
poverty alleviation on the continent. According to Muhammad Yunus, the
founder of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, the quickest way to get out
of poverty right now is to have one mobile telephone (quoted by Sinha
2005). Law and Peng (2008) describe how, in China, migrant workers
use their mobile phones to improve their working conditions and to nd
odd jobs. Over (2008) depicts how traders in Ghana use their phones in
doing business.
The main benet of mobile phones seems, however, to be the provision
of absent presence (Law and Peng 2008). According to Campbell (2008),
relational use (communication and self-expression or fashion) and safety
and security are more important than instrumental use. Molony (2008a)
emphasises the role of fashion and hipness in acquiring and having a
handset in various African countries.
Data from Mozambique conrm the importance of relational use. On
the basis of a survey among 163 mobile phone users, Brouwer and Brito
(2008) conclude that people use their phones mainly for social aims: to
keep abreast with how their family and friends are faring. Only 7 per cent
of the interviewed mobile phone owners stated to use their phones mainly
for professional (which would include any business activity) aims.
The gains felt by the users of mobile phones are only one aspect of
this technology. Another aspect is the economic dimension of the supply
of the service. The return on the build-up and exploitation of the networks;
the sale of equipment, accessories and mobile services; the retailing of
airtime and duties translate into corporate revenues of the companies
involved, the salaries of their workers, tax income for the state and the
revenues of anybody else formally or informally engaged in the mobile
phone business.
Mozambique has two mobile phone operators, MCel and Vodacom,
which have been investing in rolling out networks that cover most of the
country while concentrating on the cities and the main transport corridors.
MCel started its operation in 1997 as a branch of the state-owned telecom
company TDM (TDM 2004). Vodacom is a daughter of the Vodacom
Group that operates in several countries in Southern Africa. It entered
MOBILE PHONES IN MOZAMBIQUE 137
the market six years later, in December 2003. In 2006, MCel reported
a net prot of 308 million meticais (MT) (about US$11.7 million). Its
Average Revenue per User (ARPU) for prepaid packages is just above
US$7.59 (MCel 2007). Vodacom has much smaller revenues, possibly
because, by entering the market later, it relies on clients with a smaller
purchasing power than MCel. As a result, Vodacom Mozambiques ARPU
is only US$3.97. The company is the only one, out of the ve Vodacom
Group branches that operates with a net loss. It survives, thanks to cross-
subsidising by the other, more protable operations elsewhere in the region
(Vodacom Group 2008).
In addition to corporate prot, mobile phone operators generate in-
come for their employees. Direct employment created by the operators in
Mozambique is small: MCel with about 2.5 million clients employs merely
600 workers (KPMG Moambique 2007); Vodacom has only about 170 to
serve one million clients (Vodacom Corporate Website 2008). Together,
they contribute about 0.1 per cent to the total formally employed labour
force. The real employment impact of these companies is in the informal
sector.
Mozambique has a large informal economy. At the national level, most
people (88 per cent of the active population) do not hold a formal job but
are either self-employed or work without a salary in a family enterprise
(National Bureau of Statistics 2004). In the Maputo area, about 70 per
cent of the households is involved in the informal economy, gaining a
meagre income from retailing items such as biscuits, fruits and sweets
or from unregistered employment. Due to lay-offs associated with the
privatisation of state-owned rms during the 1990s, the importance of
the informal sector probably increased over the last two decades (Jenkins
and Wilkinson 2002).
According to data from the Ministry of Labour, there are about 600,000
formal jobs for an active population of about 10.9 million (Ministrio do
Trabalho 2005). Given this small size of the labour market, it is difcult to
nd a job. Those excluded from formal employment are forced to rely on
the informal sector, where competition is erce, too (Jenkins 2000). Several
factors inuence ones chances on the labour market. In the formal sector, the
more educated are better equipped to nd a job. Unfortunately, women and
men do not have the same access to educational services. In Mozambique,
81 per cent of the women did not complete any level of education,
against 59 per cent of the men (National Bureau of Statistics 2002).
138 Roland Brouwer
As education is skewed against women, they more often have to rely on
informal sources of income. As a result, female-headed households tend to
rely more on the informal sector than households headed by a man (Paulo
et al. 2007). Space is another important factor. Wu (2004), while analysing
the geographically differentiated impact of the transition towards a market
economy in Chinese cities, uses the expression spatiality of poverty.
Similar to China, in Maputo, neither business opportunities nor income
and the need to seek refuge in the informal sector are equally distributed
over the citys space, as some areas are more afuent and other poorer
(Brouwer and Falco 2004; Jenkins 2000).
Unfortunately, little attention has been paid to informal income gen-
eration opportunities associated with the operation of mobile phone
networks. An important exception is the work by Thomas Molony (2008a,
2008b), who describes among other things, the indirect employment
and income generation through the illicit trade in stolen handsetsan
unintended consequence of the mismatch of accessibility of and demand
for handsets ensuing from the aggressive promotion of mobile phone
useand the sale of airtime in Dar-es-Salaam. His rich ethnographic
work, however, does not contain much quantitative information about
the kind of people and the amount of money involved.
This article is an attempt to contribute to lling some of the gaps that
exist with regard to our understanding of informal income generation
through the supply of mobile phone services. It studies two important in-
formal business opportunities consciously created by the mobile phone
network operators in Mozambique: the sale of airtime vouchers and
the operation of mobile public phone kiosks. Contrary to, for example,
Europe, in Mozambique, airtime vouchers can hardly be obtained in
formal shops. Instead, they are sold by the operators own shops in the
main cities, by a small number of licenced retailing shops that normally
have a core business in consumer electronics and by a host of hawkers
who ock the streets in most major cities and towns but are particularly
ubiquitous in the capital, Maputo. Some of these vendors may operate
small business such as a drink stall or a hairdressers. Many, however, do
not use any infrastructure. Their only equipment is a vest in the colour of
the operator whose airtime they are selling: yellow for MCel and blue for
Vodacom. Nobody really knows how many of these vendors are around.
The operators claim to have no idea about their total number, nor are they
able to track the volumes of their businesses.
The second informal communication service is the operation of small
mobile telephone booths. Until 2007, OneCell, a South African company,
worked with MCel to equip thousands of people with a small kit to set up
their own public mobile phone kiosk. The operators would buy the kits
and airtime, and resell the airtime to clients who do not have their own
mobile phone. OneCell, which since the beginning of 2008 operates with
Vodacom, claims to have about 10,000 independent mini-businesses set
up under this franchise model (interview with Prudncia da Costa, Head,
OneCell Mozambique, 5 June 2008).
This article provides a rst assessment of these two informal businesses.
It is based on a survey among 100 airtime vendors and 100 mobile
phone kiosks. The questionnaire was brief and concentrated on key in-
formation such as gender, household size and number of dependents,
level of education, area of residence and operation, the volume of the
business, generated revenues, invested labour time and the application
of the revenues.
The stratication by neighbourhood also allowed for the consideration
of the role of Maputos urban geographya wealthier city-centre sur-
rounded by shanty towns (Jenkins 2000)in the operation and revenues
of these informal businesses. Maputo consists of seven urban districts.
Each of these districts is subdivided in between seven and thirteen
neighbourhoods or bairros. Brouwer and Falco (2004) used the largest
subdivision in urban districts to analyse the role of space and income on
the use of fuel for cooking. In this article, the unit of stratication is one
level lower: the neighbourhood. This allows for a more differentiated ap-
proach of the central districts.
The samples are randomly selected and therefore, statistically repre-
sentative at the level of the neighbourhood. As there is no information
about number of vendors and kiosks in each neighbourhood, generalisation
of these results to the level of the city can only be indicative.
The Trade in Airtime Vouchers
Even though female-headed households tend to rely more frequently on
the informal market, the trade in airtime vouchers is a male-dominated
business. Out of the 100 interviewed street traders, 72 were male and
28 female. Almost half of the respondents (forty-six) were born in Maputo
city, twenty-eight in Maputo province and seven in the neighbouring
140 Roland Brouwer
province, Gaza. The remainder (nineteen) came from other provinces
ranging from Inhambane in the south to Nampula in the north of the
country. All have beneted from at least some education: the number of
completed classes ranges from ve to eleven.
Table 1 provides a summary of the completed level of education of
the male and female street vendors and compares this with the national
average as measured by the National Bureau of Statistics (INE). The gures
in the table show that the airtime vendors are relatively well educated:
all but one concluded at least primary education (rst till seventh grade),
which is more than three times the citys average percentage. Sixty-six
completed even a higher class (grade eight to eleven), but none actually
completed secondary school (grade twelve). Apparently, education is an
asset to become an airtime hawker.
TABLE 1
Completed Level of Education of the Street Vendors
in Comparison with the National Averages
Education (completed)
Gender
Total number
In population INE
(2002) (per cent) Male Female
None 0 0 0 23.7
Primary 1 (5th) 0 1 1 31.1
Primary 2 (7th) 72 27 99 28.6
Middle level (12th) 0 0 0 16.6
Higher level 0 0 0
Total 72 28 100 100.0
The gures in Table 1 conceal the difference between women and men
as to education. The women in the sample are clearly less educated than
men. This phenomenon is conrmed by the data in Table 2, which provides
a summary of some key characteristics of the airtime hawkers, including
their last competed classes. It appears that the median of the number of
completed classes of the female sellers (median 7) is signicantly lower
than that of their male colleagues (median 8).
1
The sellers are between 48 and 17 years of age, with an average age
of 30 years. The men are on the average about two years younger than
the women (Table 2).
2

The vendors households have on the average 5.7 members; on
the average, 2.6 members contribute to the households expenditures
(including the vendor). The households of female sellers are signicantly
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142 Roland Brouwer
larger than those of their male colleagues, but there is no difference in the
number of members who contribute to its income (2.6). In forty-seven
cases, the revenues are used by the seller himself or herself and in the
remaining fty-three cases, they are used to support the expenditures of the
household in general. Frequently mentioned destinations of the revenues
are: education (forty), transport (twenty-ve) and clothes (twenty). There
is a clear role of gender as to the use of the revenues: all but one of the
interviewed women use them to sustain their households and almost two-
thirds of the men use them for their personal aims (Table 2).
3
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the personal and the household coincide as the man is living alone.
The responses indicate that the total average sales would round 866
MT per day. Although the volume of sales of men is slightly higher than
that of the women, this difference is not statistically signicant. The gross
prot margin is about 10 per cent, which would imply that the net daily
income would amount 87 MT or approximately US$3.50 (one MT is
about US$0.04). The interviewed people work between 8 and 13 hours
a day and 6 or 7 days a week. Given an average household size of 5.7,
selling vouchers contributes with US$0.61 to the households per capita
income. In 79 cases, selling vouchers is not the only source of income of
the interviewed hawkers.
Many hawkers sell their vouchers with a discount to their clients. This
discount varies according to the size of the voucher and can go up to about
7 per cent. Discounts on Vodacom vouchers are signicantly higher than
the discounts on MCel vouchers, although there is not much difference
in the prot margin between each company.
4
The gures in Table 3 show
that the size of the discount is also dependent on the area where the seller
operates: in the better-off Polana Cimento area, for example, no discounts
are applied and in the adjacent Bairro Central area, discounts are lower
than in the other neighbourhoods, too.
Almost two-thirds of the sellers (sixty-three) sell in the neighbourhood
where they reside and the remainder (thirty-seven) in different
neighbourhood. There is a relation between the areas where people trade
and where they live (Table 4). In the case of Polana Cimento, none of
the sellers actually lives in the area, whereas in the cases of Hulene and
Polana Canio, the sellers are local residents. This obviously is related to
the social stature of each neighbourhood. Polana Cimento is one of the
better-off areas in town and its residents apparently do not resort to
the informal market to make ends meet. Hulene and Polana Canio are
TABLE 3
Results of Analysis of Variance for the Relation
between Applied Discounts and Neighbourhoods
Urban district
Number of
respondents
Subset for alpha = 0.05
1 2 3
Neighbourhoods
Polana Cimento 1 10 0.00
Bairro Central 1 10 1.70
Xipamanine 2 8 2.75 2.75
Malhangalene 1 10 3.40
Alto Ma 1 9 3.44
Magoanine 5 10 3.50
Chamanculo 2 10 3.50
Polana Canio 3 9 3.56
Xiquelene (Ferrovirio) 4 10 4.20
Hulene 4 10 4.30
Sig. 1.000 0.152 0.071
Source: Analysis by the author.
Note: Means for groups in homogeneous subsets are displayed.

Uses harmonic mean sample size = 9,549.

The group sizes are unequal.

The harmonic mean of the group sizes is used. Type I error levels are not
guaranteed.
TABLE 4
Number of Interviewed Hawkers Who Live
in the Same Neighbourhood as where they Sell
Neighbourhood Urban district
Live in the neighbourhood
where they sell
Total Yes No
Hulene 4 10 0 10
Polana Canio 3 10 0 10
Magoanine 5 8 2 10
Xipamanine 2 8 2 10
Alto Ma 1 7 3 10
Malhangalene 1 6 4 10
Chamanculo 2 5 5 10
Xiquelene 4 5 5 10
Bairro Central 1 4 6 10
Polana Cimento 1 0 10 10
Total 63 37 100
144 Roland Brouwer
typically poor areas, where most of the residents are unemployed and
many rely on small businesses for their survival. A two-by-two cross table
juxtaposing the central Urban District Number One (UD1) (the Polana
Cimento, Bairro Central, Alto Ma and Malhangalene neighbourhoods)
and the other, peri-urban, districts conrms that street vendors in the central
districts are typically not from the area where they operate, whereas in
the other districts, the opposite is the case.
5
The area where a seller operates also inuences his or her total revenues.
In Polana Cimento, the average is with 1,255 MT, more than the double
of that in Xiquelene (Table 5). At the level of the Urban Districts, the
difference in income is also highly signicant. The average sale in UD1
is with 1,019 MT, about 25 per cent higher than the average of other dis-
tricts (764 MT).
6
TABLE 5
Results of Analysis of Variance for the Relation between
Neighbourhood and Average Daily Revenues (Meticais)
Neighbourhood
Urban
district
Number of
respondents
Subset for alpha = 0.05
1 2 3 4
Xiquelene 4 10 598.00
Xipamanine 2 10 713.00 713.00
Magoanine 5 10 750.00 750.00
Hulene 4 10 770.00 770.00
Polana Canio 3 10 840.00 840.00
Bairro Central 1 10 890.00 890.00
Alto Ma 1 10 900.00 900.00
Chamanculo 2 10 912.00 912.00
Malhangalene 1 10 1030.00
Sig. 0.137 0.104 0.109 1.000
The hawkers revenue is the mirror of the trade. If they are able to sell
on the average 866 MT per day, it means that the companies sell the same
value in airtime. It is difcult to establish how much airtime this really is,
as it obviously depends on how the buyer uses his voucher: if he or she
makes calls within the same network, at peak hours or off-hours, and so on.
A rough estimate, using the middle-range tariff, indicates that each seller
is responsible for about 180 minutes of mobile communication per day.
Out of the 100 interviewed street sellers, 42 traded only MCel vouchers,
5 only Vodacom vouchers and 53 vouchers of both operators. Apparently,
many traders are not true to the colour that they wear. More importantly, MCel
has the wider distribution network: 95 per cent sell MCel vouchers against
58 per cent who sell Vodacom airtime. Sellers acquire their vouchers at
three sources: the operators own outlets (sixty), resellers (twenty-six) or
colleagues (one). Twenty-three bought their vouchers at the operators
outlet and at resellers.
We have no idea about the number of clients that each hawker serves.
However, it is indicative that the smallest voucher (20 MT or US$0.80) is by
and large cited as the most popular: seventy-one interviewed hawkers state
that this is the most frequently sold voucher. Given a mean daily turnover
of 866 MT, a seller would serve about 40 clients per day.
This number provides us with an indication of the size of the informal
voucher retail network. On the basis of a nationwide survey, Brouwer
and Brito (2008) estimate that there are about 800,000 mobile phones
in Maputo City alone. If only half of these rely on the street market to
buy airtime, the network that supplies them can be expected to consist
of approximately 10,000 hawkers! Together, the estimated size of the
mass of hawkers that ock the citys streets, the small monthly revenues
each of them is able (and disposed) to obtain from selling airtime and the
popularity of the smallest voucher lay out the main characteristic of the
airtime market of Maputo. To access their clients, the network operators
maintain an extensive and cheap supply network that sells small individual
volumes to a huge number of clients.
One Cell Mobile Phone Kiosks
The second important business related with the development of the mobile
phone network is the operation of mobile phone kiosks. These kiosks have
an edge over the traditional landline-based phone booths, as the latter
charge the landline tariffs to mobile subscribers, which are substantially
higher than those within the mobile networks. Mobile phone kiosks are
operated by a South African company called OneCell. People interested in
setting up a OneCell kiosk have to buy a kit from the OneCell company.
This kit consists, minimally, of a battery-operated phone, an antenna and
an umbrella, but can also include a battery and a charger. The complete
146 Roland Brouwer
package costs 4995 MT (about US$200) and includes also 1200 MT
(US$60) of airtime. The operator buys airtime at OneCell and sells this
airtime with a prot of 50 per cent (for example, US$20 air time is sold for
US$30). During our research, 100 OneCell operators were interviewed in
the same neighbourhoods as the street sellers of airtime. The interviewed
operators all acquired their airtime directly at the operator and never used
intermediaries.
The operators started working with OneCell between past 36 and 3
months. On an average, they had their phone booth for 10.9 months. Out
of the 100 interviewed operators, seventy-four were male and twenty-six
were female. About one-third (thirty-eight) were born in Maputo city;
twenty-four in Maputo province; eight in the neighbouring province
Gaza and eleven from Inhambane. The remainder (twenty-nine) came
from provinces in the centre and north of the country. Almost two-thirds
of the sellers (fty-nine) sell in the neighbourhood where they reside, the
remainder (forty-one) in different neighbourhood. All have beneted from
at least some education; the number of completed classes ranges from
grade six to eleven (median 8), with the level of education of the female
sellers signicantly lower than that of their male colleagues (Mann
Whitney test, p = 0.027). Compared with the general level of education
in the population of Maputo, kiosk operators are relatively well educated
(Table 6).
TABLE 6
Level of Education of Kiosk Operators by Gender
Compared with the Average Level in Maputo
Education (completed)
Gender
Total
number
In population
INE (2002) (per cent) Male Female
None 0 0 0 23.7
Primary 1 (7th) 1 6 7 31.1
Primary 2 (10th) 73 20 93 28.6
Middle level (12th) 0 0 0 16.6
Higher level 0 0 0
Total 74 26 100 100
Signicance:
90 per cent,
95 per cent and
99 per cent.
Table 7 contains a summary of other key characteristics of the mobile
phone kiosk operators. It appears that, similar to the sellers of aitime vouchers,
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148 Roland Brouwer
the operators are between 17 and 48 years of age, with an average age of
28 years. The kiosk operators households have, on an average, 5.2 members;
on an average, 2.9 members contribute to the households expenditures
(including the seller). Like in the case of the street vendors, households of
male operators tend to be smaller (4.8 compared to 6.3) with more con-
tributors to the households budget (3.0 compared to 2.7) than those of
female operators.
7
The expenditures are for personal use (thirty cases) or to
support the household in general (seventy cases). All thirty operators who
use the revenues for themselves are male, repeating the pattern observed
in the case of voucher sellers.
8
This might be associated to the fact that the
males households are smaller, with a higher percentage of contributors.
Frequently mentioned destinations of the revenues are: food (ninety-nine),
transport (seventy-three) and clothes (thirty-four).
The responses indicate that the total average sales are around 980 MT
per week. With a gross prot margin of 33 per cent, this implies that the
average net daily income is 46 MT or about US$1.80. The interviewed
operators work between 8 and 12 hours a day and 6 or 7 days a week.
With an average household size of 5.2, operating a kiosk contributes with
US$0.36 to the per capita income.
As in the case of the hawkers, there is also a relation between the
places where people operate and where people live. In fty-nine cases,
these areas are the same, and in forty-one, they are not. Polana Cimento
is again the area where operators are not resident (Table 8). A two-by-two
cross table juxtaposing the central neighbourhoods in UD1 and the other,
peri-urban districts conrms that kiosk operators in the central districts
are typically not from the area where they operate, whereas in the other
districts, the opposite is the case.
9
The area where a seller operates also inuences his or her total revenues.
In Bairro Central and Polana Cimento, the average is with 1170 MT, more
than 1.4 times that of Xiquelene (Table 9). As in the case of the airtime
sellers, the neighbourhoods with the highest gross revenues are the better
parts of the city: Polana Cimento and Bairro Central in UD1.
10
Comparing Hawkers and Phone Booth Operators
Along the previous section, we already made some comparisons between
the sellers of airtime vouchers and the operators of cellular phone booths.
First, there is a lot of similarity. About three-quarters are male and
TABLE 8
The Relationship between the Neighbourhood of Operation and of Residence
Neighbourhood Urban district
Live in the neighbourhood
where they operate
Total Yes No
Magoanine 5 10 0 10
Polana Canio 3 9 1 10
Hulene 4 8 2 10
Chamanculo 2 6 4 10
Malhangalene 1 6 4 10
Xipamanine 2 6 4 10
Alto Mae 1 5 5 10
Bairro Central 1 5 5 10
Xiquelene 4 4 6 10
Polana Cimento 1 0 10 10
Total 59 41 100
TABLE 9
Results of Analysis of Variance for the Relation between
Neighbourhood and Average Gross Revenues for Alpha = 0.05
Neighbourhood
Urban
district
Sample
size
Homogenous groups average revenue
1 2 3
Chamanculo 2 10 847.50
Xipamanine 2 10 855.00
Xiquelene 4 10 885.00
Polana Canio 3 10 885.00
Magoanine 5 10 937.50
Hulene 4 10 945.00
Alto Ma 1 10 975.00 975.00
Malhangalene 1 10 1140.00 1140.00
Bairro Central 1 10 1170.00
Sig. 0.215372 0.061845 0.748936
one-quarter female. Generally speaking, they have at least concluded
primary school (seventh grade), but not nished secondary (grade twelve).
They are typically young, between 17 and 48 years. Male sellers and
operators very frequently use the revenues from their trades for themselves.
Their female counterparts, normally, assume a larger responsibility and
150 Roland Brouwer
use the revenues from their mobile phone businesses for the benet of
their entire households. They also tend to live in larger households with
more dependents.
In both cases, the neighbourhood where they operate is a key variable to
their business. Revenues are signicantly higher in the better-off areas. In
these areas, airtime vouchers and mobile phone services are typically sold
by people who live elsewhere. To a certain extent, this is surprising: the
fact that, for example, in Polana Cimento more airtime vouchers are sold
than elsewhere would suggest that the demand for public phone booths
would be lower. Apparently, this relation does not exist.
The most striking disparity is the revenue of the two groups. While
OneCell operators have to make a considerable investment, their business
turnover is small compared to that of the prepaid airtime sellers. The
revenues from operating OneCell are US$1.80 per day, about half
the amount made by the sellers of airtime vouchers (US$3.50 per day).
Hence, it is no surprise that only in four cases, the OneCell operation is the
only source of income of the interviewed operators, compared to twenty-
one airtime sellers who declared not having other sources of income.
11
Together, both are important links in the supply of mobile phone
services. OneCell declined to provide insight in its turnover. However,
knowing that the average operator sells about 980 MT of airtime per week
and knowing that there are 10,000 operators, the weekly turnover through
OneCell phone booths easily is around 9,800,000 MT or US$390,000.
The volume traded through the hawkers is even larger: 60 million MT or
US$2.4 million in Maputo alone. As the assumed number of 10,000 airtime
voucher sellers in Maputo is probably quite conservative, real turnover by
hawkers is likely to be much higher, and might easily achieve double.
The importance of these informal traders to the companies becomes
clear if one looks at their annual gross revenues per month per client
(ARPU). Vodacoms ARPU for 2007 was 28 ZAR or US$3.97. This
means that total monthly gross revenues with the 998,000 stated clients is
US$3.96 million or about US$990,000 per week. Using the 2007 values
as a basis for the calculation, the OneCell operators contribute almost
25 per cent to this turnover.
Over 2006, MCels ARPU for prepaid customers (about 95 per cent of
all mobile phone users) was US$7.59. On the basis of this information,
the estimated monthly turnover in 2007 with 2.5 million stated clients
is US$18,975,000 or US$4,744,000 per week. Together, Vodacom and
MCel estimated gross weekly revenue amounts to US$5.7 million with
3.5 million stated clients. Using the very conservative estimative of the
amount turned over by the street vendors (US$2.4 million per week), the
contribution of the street vendors rounds about 70 per cent of the total sold
airtime of the companies. Taken together, OneCell operators and street
vendors are responsible for almost 80 per cent of the turnover.
Conclusion
The survey among airtime voucher vendors and mobile phone kiosk
operators has shown that the people engaged in these businesses are
quite similar. They are relatively young with at least some education, and
conrming the spatiality of poverty, they live in the poorer neighbourhoods
that surround the city centre. Most of them are male, contradicting the
general belief that the informal sector is typically the refuge for women.
For many, selling vouchers or operating OneCell phone booths is a means
to strengthen ones personal or household income. People engaging in this
activity are predominantly male. Revenues are typically used to pay the
costs of schools, transport and clothes besides, of course, general household
expenditures on food. Women tend to use the revenues to support a
household, whereas men tend to use it for their personal benets.
The average revenue of the hawkers is estimated at about US$3.50 per
day. With working weeks of 6 to 7 days, this would result into a monthly
income of about US$100. OneCell operators make smaller revenues
(US$1.80 per day or US$50 per month). In both cases, the size of the
income is dependent on the area where they operate, as turnover is larger
in the wealthier neighbourhoods. Moreover, in many cases, street vendors
are forced to transfer part of the discount obtained at his or her supplier
to the client. Sellers operating in the wealthier parts of town are better-
off than those in the poorer areas because the former are able to retain a
larger share of this discount.
Formal employment by the two cellular phone operators is small:
together, they have less than 800 employees. This number is dwarfed
by the number of people who are an informal part of the organisation
supplying mobile phone services. Nationwide, there are 10,000 OneCell
phone booths. A very rough estimate suggests that on the streets of Maputo
operate about 10,000 hawkers selling airtime. This informal labour force is,
therefore, at least twenty-ve times larger than the formal labour force.
152 Roland Brouwer
The importance of this informal labour force for the operators can
hardly be overstated. The airtime vendors and kiosk operators play a key
role in resolving the challenge the mobile phone operators face to supply a
large number of small consumers. Together, they guarantee at least 80 per
cent of the total airtime sales. Together, they carry the weight of economic
operations of million dollar corporations who operate on a market with
extremely low purchasing power, working against an income that barely
keeps them above the one-dollar-a-day per capita poverty line.
NOTES
1. Two-sample KolmogorovSmirnov, p = 0.031; MannWhitney, p=0.008 (two-sided).
2. Students t-test for two independent samples, p = 0.053 (two-sided).
3. Fisher Exact Test, two-sided: p = 0.000.
4. Students t-test, two-sided: p = 0.000.
5. Signicant at 99 per cent. Chi-square is 30.40. The critical Chi-square for a signicance
of 99 per cent with one degree of freedom is 6.63.
6. Students t test, p = 0.000.
7. Students t test shows that in these differences are signicant at 95 per cent and 99 per
cent respectively.
8. The difference is signicant at 99 per cent. Fishers exact test produces a p = 0.000.
9. Signicant at 99 per cent. Chi-square is 9.85. The critical Chi-square for a signicance
of 99 per cent with one degree of freedom is 6.63.
10. The difference between DU1 with an average daily turnover of 1112 MT and the other
urban districts with an average turnover of 893 MT is signicant at 99 per cent (Students
t-test, p = 0.000, equal variances not assumed, two-tailed).
11. The difference is signicant at 99 per cent; Chi-square is 13.14 in 2 2 table.
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The group sizes are unequal.

95 per cent and

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