The world has become smaller. The connections established by e-mail and websites have significantly shortened the distances between people. We can live in London and shop in Johannesburg; we can be based in Brussels and run a business out of Bombay.

The internet has become a constant and inescapable part of our lives. But what would life be like without e-mail, Facebook, or Skype?

It’s hard to remember a time when we didn’t have any of these - unless, of course, you are among those who never had it.

Welcome to Gitata, a small village in Nassarwara state in northern Nigeria. It is about two hours’ drive from the shiny capital Abuja and is not remote in terms of physical accessibilty. But, in many other respects, Gitata is disconnected. It’s not connected to the national electricity grid and has no running water or even a single tarred road.
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In January, I handed over two internet-enabled mobile phones to them. I returned a few weeks later to find out how they had progressed.

The results have been an eye-opener. Both Nicholas and Moses had to overcome the challenge of getting used to the technology: setting up a mobile e-mail account, establishing the basic connections to the service provider etc - challenges that mobile users everywhere experience.

To read this BBC News report in full, see:
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8573346.stm