The latest technology is enabling villagers to bypass middlemen and find out the prices their crops will command

Mobile phones are charged using a car battery, at a Katine market Photograph: Martin Godwin/Guardian

Every week without fail, sellers come to trade their meat, vegetables or animals in the dusty marketplace of Katine in north-east Uganda. Yet a closer look reveals something unusual: a series of stalls with pulped wood awnings supported by crooked tree branches. Within each there is someone in a chair receiving a haircut. More unexpected are a dozen or so mobile phones, each connected by a wire to a car battery, which gives the handsets a much needed recharge.

Along with the odd Premier League football shirt, mobile phones are an incongruous glimpse of modernity amid the daily struggle for money and food in Katine. They are also a crucial component in the livelihoods strategy of the African Medical and Research Foundation (Amref) and its partner Farm-Africa in Katine, backed by donations from Observer and Guardian readers and Barclays.

To read this report in full in The Observer, see www.guardian.co.uk/katine/2009/jan/04/katine-uganda-africa-mobile-phones.