Enhancing the Use of the Mobile Infrastructure in Cameroon. The Case of Bayam Sellam

Abstract

The expansion and the reliability of mobile technology in Sub-Sahara Africa - as well as elsewhere - opened up diverse opportunities. For instance, the access to learning material, conduction of commercial activities, promotion of agricultural activities, enhancement of governmental transparency, support of healthcare practices, etc. To harness the existing mobile infrastructure, diverse users are looking for effective and efficient ways, for instance, the Bayam Sellam in Cameroon. Bayam Sellam refers to people engaged in trade between rural and urban markets. This work analyses the usage and development of information and communication technology in Sub-Sahara Africa in general, and the mobile technology and its constraints in particular. An efficient use of the mobile technology depends on appropriate mobile services and applications. These should produce and use local digital content, so as to enhance the use of the existing mobile infrastructure and contribute to satisfy the users' needs. As a case study, we deal with a tailored mobile commerce solution for Bayam Sellam and other related stakeholders such as the governmental department for price regulation. The arising question is how Bayam Sellam can use the mobile devices to improve their business activities and, thereby, use the mobile infrastructure more efficiently. With a questionnaire, we investigate the wishes of 250 Bayam Sellam in Ngaoundere. The aim was to develop a tailored mobile commerce solution called Bayasella for Bayam Sellam. The solution is a hybrid application based on the approach of local data storage, web technologies and frameworks (HTML5, PhoneGap, etc.). Bayasella stores product details offline, and synchronises them with the online database whenever the user wants. The online activities (up/downloading offers) shall be very short so as to minimise charges. Another key issue is: if the provided architecture can be applied to other domains. We put our attention on a combined mobile weather application that impacts the mobile technology and the Bayam Sellam business activities. For this purpose, we combine endogenous qualitative weather data - from ethnic group Tpuri - with existing quantifiable data from established weather forecasting systems, such as World Weather Online.