Thirty years ago, making a phone call from Somalia meant crossing the border into better-connected Kenya or Ethiopia. Yet by 2004 the lawless nation had more telephone connections per capita than any other east African country. Today, the Somali state is still fragile: insecurity is rife and government services are poor. But mobile data in Somalia is cheaper than in Britain, Finland or Japan—and the signal is good, too. Jethro Norman, a Mancunian anthropologist who does research in Somalia, says he gets better mobile coverage in some of the remotest parts of the country than he does in Manchester.
