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DOI: 10.1177/097172180901500106 2010 15: 135Science Technology Society

Roland BrouwerMaputo City

Mobile Phones in Mozambique : The Street Trade in Airtime in

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136 Roland Brouwer

Science, Technology & Society 15:1 (2010): 135154

studies highlighting the bene ts of this technology. Many authors (for

example, Coyle 2005; Donner 2008; Over 2008; Srivastava 2008) drawattention to the impact of mobile phones on economic growth and income.Rhett Butler (2005), in a web item called Cell Phones May Help SaveAfrica, suggests that these simple instruments may be the best tool for

poverty alleviation on the continent. According to Muhammad Yunus, thefounder of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, the quickest way to get outof poverty right now is to have one mobile telephone (quoted by Sinha2005). Law and Peng (2008) describe how, in China, migrant workersuse their mobile phones to improve their working conditions and to ndodd jobs. Over (2008) depicts how traders in Ghana use their phones indoing business.

The main bene t of mobile phones seems, however, to be the provisionof absent presence (Law and Peng 2008). According to Campbell (2008),relational use (communication and self-expression or fashion) and safetyand security are more important than instrumental use. Molony (2008a)emphasises the role of fashion and hipness in acquiring and having ahandset in various African countries.

Data from Mozambique con rm the importance of relational use. Onthe basis of a survey among 163 mobile phone users, Brouwer and Brito(2008) conclude that people use their phones mainly for social aims: tokeep abreast with how their family and friends are faring. Only 7 per centof the interviewed mobile phone owners stated to use their phones mainlyfor professional (which would include any business activity) aims.

The gains felt by the users of mobile phones are only one aspect ofthis 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 ofairtime and duties translate into corporate revenues of the companiesinvolved, the salaries of their workers, tax income for the state and therevenues 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 telecomcompany TDM (TDM 2004). Vodacom is a daughter of the VodacomGroup that operates in several countries in Southern Africa. It entered

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MOBILE PHONES IN MOZAMBIQUE 137


the market six years later, in December 2003. In 2006, MCel reported

a net pro

t of 308 million meticais (MT) (about US$11.7 million). ItsAverage Revenue per User (ARPU) for prepaid packages is just aboveUS$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 ARPUis only US$3.97. The company is the only one, out of the ve VodacomGroup branches that operates with a net loss. It survives, thanks to cross-subsidising by the other, more pro table operations elsewhere in the region(Vodacom Group 2008).

In addition to corporate pro t, mobile phone operators generate in-come for their employees. Direct employment created by the operators inMozambique is small: MCel with about 2.5 million clients employs merely600 workers (KPMG Moambique 2007); Vodacom has only about 170 toserve one million clients (Vodacom Corporate Website 2008). Together,they contribute about 0.1 per cent to the total formally employed labourforce. The real employment impact of these companies is in the informalsector.

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 butare either self-employed or work without a salary in a family enterprise(National Bureau of Statistics 2004). In the Maputo area, about 70 percent of the households is involved in the informal economy, gaining ameagre income from retailing items such as biscuits, fruits and sweetsor 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 (Jenkinsand Wilkinson 2002).

According to data from the Ministry of Labour, there are about 600,000formal jobs for an active population of about 10.9 million (Ministrio doTrabalho 2005). Given this small size of the labour market, it is dif cult to nd a job. Those excluded from formal employment are forced to rely onthe informal sector, where competition is erce, too (Jenkins 2000). Severalfactors in uence ones chances on the labour market. In the formal sector, the

more educated are better equipped to

nd a job. Unfortunately, women andmen 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).



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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 torely more on the informal sector than households headed by a man (Pauloet al. 2007). Space is another important factor. Wu (2004), while analysingthe geographically differentiated impact of the transition towards a marketeconomy in Chinese cities, uses the expression spatiality of poverty.Similar to China, in Maputo, neither business opportunities nor incomeand the need to seek refuge in the informal sector are equally distributedover the citys space, as some areas are more af uent 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 phonenetworks. An important exception is the work by Thomas Molony (2008a,2008b), who describes among other things, the indirect employmentand income generation through the illicit trade in stolen handsetsanunintended consequence of the mismatch of accessibility of and demandfor handsets ensuing from the aggressive promotion of mobile phoneuseand the sale of airtime in Dar-es-Salaam. His rich ethnographicwork, however, does not contain much quantitative information aboutthe kind of people and the amount of money involved.

This article is an attempt to contribute to lling some of the gaps thatexist with regard to our understanding of informal income generationthrough the supply of mobile phone services. It studies two important in-formal business opportunities consciously created by the mobile phonenetwork operators in Mozambique: the sale of airtime vouchers andthe operation of mobile public phone kiosks. Contrary to, for example,

Europe, in Mozambique, airtime vouchers can hardly be obtained informal shops. Instead, they are sold by the operators own shops in themain cities, by a small number of licenced retailing shops that normallyhave a core business in consumer electronics and by a host of hawkerswho ock the streets in most major cities and towns but are particularlyubiquitous in the capital, Maputo. Some of these vendors may operatesmall business such as a drink stall or a hairdressers. Many, however, donot 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 forVodacom. Nobody really knows how many of these vendors are around.The operators claim to have no idea about their total number, nor are theyable to track the volumes of their businesses.



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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 uptheir own public mobile phone kiosk. The operators would buy the kitsand airtime, and resell the airtime to clients who do not have their ownmobile phone. OneCell, which since the beginning of 2008 operates withVodacom, claims to have about 10,000 independent mini-businesses setup 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 applicationof the revenues.

The strati cation by neighbourhood also allowed for the considerationof the role of Maputos urban geographya wealthier city-centre sur-rounded by shanty towns (Jenkins 2000)in the operation and revenuesof these informal businesses. Maputo consists of seven urban districts.Each of these districts is subdivided in between seven and thirteenneighbourhoods or bairros . Brouwer and Falco (2004) used the largestsubdivision in urban districts to analyse the role of space and income onthe use of fuel for cooking. In this article, the unit of strati cation is onelevel 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 informationabout number of vendors and kiosks in each neighbourhood, generalisationof 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 and28 female. Almost half of the respondents (forty-six) were born in Maputocity, twenty-eight in Maputo province and seven in the neighbouring



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140 Roland Brouwer


province, Gaza. The remainder (nineteen) came from other provinces

ranging from Inhambane in the south to Nampula in the north of thecountry. All have bene ted from at least some education: the number ofcompleted classes ranges from ve to eleven.

Table 1 provides a summary of the completed level of education ofthe male and female street vendors and compares this with the nationalaverage as measured by the National Bureau of Statistics (INE). The guresin 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-sixcompleted even a higher class (grade eight to eleven), but none actuallycompleted secondary school (grade twelve). Apparently, education is anasset to become an airtime hawker.

T ABLE 1Completed 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 23.7Primary 1 (5th) 0 1 1 31.1Primary 2 (7th) 72 27 99 28.6Middle level (12th) 0 0 0 16.6Higher level 0 0 0Total 72 28 100 100.0

The gures in Table 1 conceal the difference between women and menas to education. The women in the sample are clearly less educated thanmen. This phenomenon is con rmed by the data in Table 2, which providesa summary of some key characteristics of the airtime hawkers, includingtheir last competed classes. It appears that the median of the number ofcompleted classes of the female sellers (median 7) is signi cantly lowerthan that of their male colleagues (median 8). 1

The sellers are between 48 and 17 years of age, with an average ageof 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 signi cantly



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T A B L E 2

S o m e K

e y F e a

t u r e s o f

t h e

I n t e r v

i e w e d

S t r e e t

V e n

d o r s

b y G e n

d e r

V e n d o r

g e n d e r

N u m b e r

s a m p l e

A v e r a g e

M e d i a n

H i g h e s t

c o m p l e t e d

c l a s s

O b j e c t i v e r e v e n u e s

A g e ( y

e a r s ) H o u s e h o l d s i z e

N u m b e r o f m e m b e r s

w i t h i n c o m e

D a i l y s a l e s o f

v e n d o r

S u s t a i n

o n e s e l f

S u s t a i n

h o u s e h o l d

M a l e

7 2

2 9

5 . 3

2 . 6

8 9 3 . 3 3

8

4 6

2 6

F e m a l e

2 6

3 1

6 . 5

2 . 6

7 9 5 . 0 0

7

1

2 7

T o t a l

1 0 0

3 0

5 . 7

2 . 6

8 6 5 . 8 0

8

4 7

5 3

S o u r c e : A n a

l y s i s

b y t h e a u

t h o r .

N o t e :

L e v e l s o f s i g n

i c a n c e :

9 0 p e r c e n

t , 9 5 p e r c e n t a n

d 9 9 p e r c e n t .

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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-sevencases, the revenues are used by the seller himself or herself and in theremaining fty-three cases, they are used to support the expenditures of thehousehold in general. Frequently mentioned destinations of the revenuesare: education (forty), transport (twenty- ve) and clothes (twenty). Thereis a clear role of gender as to the use of the revenues: all but one of theinterviewed women use them to sustain their households and almost two-thirds of the men use them for their personal aims (Table 2). 3 In three cases,the personal and the household coincide as the man is living alone.

The responses indicate that the total average sales would round 866MT per day. Although the volume of sales of men is slightly higher thanthat of the women, this difference is not statistically signi cant. The gross

pro t margin is about 10 per cent, which would imply that the net dailyincome would amount 87 MT or approximately US$3.50 (one MT isabout US$0.04). The interviewed people work between 8 and 13 hoursa 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 capitaincome. In 79 cases, selling vouchers is not the only source of income ofthe interviewed hawkers.

Many hawkers sell their vouchers with a discount to their clients. Thisdiscount varies according to the size of the voucher and can go up to about7 per cent. Discounts on Vodacom vouchers are signi cantly higher thanthe discounts on MCel vouchers, although there is not much differencein the pro t margin between each company. 4 The gures in Table 3 showthat 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 discountsare applied and in the adjacent Bairro Central area, discounts are lowerthan in the other neighbourhoods, too.

Almost two-thirds of the sellers (sixty-three) sell in the neighbourhoodwhere they reside and the remainder (thirty-seven) in differentneighbourhood. There is a relation between the areas where people tradeand where they live (Table 4). In the case of Polana Cimento, none ofthe sellers actually lives in the area, whereas in the cases of Hulene and

Polana Canio, the sellers are local residents. This obviously is related tothe social stature of each neighbourhood. Polana Cimento is one of the better-off areas in town and its residents apparently do not resort tothe informal market to make ends meet. Hulene and Polana Canio are



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T ABLE 3Results of Analysis of Variance for the Relation

between Applied Discounts and Neighbourhoods

Urban district Number ofrespondents

Subset for alpha = 0.05

1 2 3

NeighbourhoodsPolana Cimento 1 10 0.00Bairro Central 1 10 1.70Xipamanine 2 8 2.75 2.75Malhangalene 1 10 3.40Alto Ma 1 9 3.44Magoanine 5 10 3.50Chamanculo 2 10 3.50Polana Canio 3 9 3.56Xiquelene (Ferrovirio) 4 10 4.20Hulene 4 10 4.30Sig. 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 notguaranteed.

T ABLE 4Number of Interviewed Hawkers Who Live

in the Same Neighbourhood as where they Sell

Neighbourhood Urban district

Live in the neighbourhoodwhere they sell

Total Yes No

Hulene 4 10 0 10Polana Canio 3 10 0 10Magoanine 5 8 2 10Xipamanine 2 8 2 10Alto Ma 1 7 3 10Malhangalene 1 6 4 10Chamanculo 2 5 5 10Xiquelene 4 5 5 10

Bairro Central 1 4 6 10Polana Cimento 1 0 10 10Total 63 37 100

Source: Analysis by the author.



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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 PolanaCimento, Bairro Central, Alto Ma and Malhangalene neighbourhoods)and the other, peri-urban, districts con rms that street vendors in the centraldistricts are typically not from the area where they operate, whereas inthe other districts, the opposite is the case. 5

The area where a seller operates also in uences 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, thedifference in income is also highly signi cant. The average sale in UD1is with 1,019 MT, about 25 per cent higher than the average of other dis-tricts (764 MT). 6

T ABLE 5Results of Analysis of Variance for the Relation betweenNeighbourhood and Average Daily Revenues (Meticais)

Neighbourhood Urbandistrict Number ofrespondents

Subset for alpha = 0.05

1 2 3 4Xiquelene 4 10 598.00Xipamanine 2 10 713.00 713.00Magoanine 5 10 750.00 750.00Hulene 4 10 770.00 770.00Polana Canio 3 10 840.00 840.00Bairro Central 1 10 890.00 890.00Alto Ma 1 10 900.00 900.00Chamanculo 2 10 912.00 912.00

Malhangalene 1 10 1030.00Polana Cimento 1 10 1255.00Sig. 0.137 0.104 0.109 1.000


The hawkers revenue is the mirror of the trade. If they are able to sellon the average 866 MT per day, it means that the companies sell the samevalue in airtime. It is dif cult to establish how much airtime this really is,as it obviously depends on how the buyer uses his voucher: if he or shemakes 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 selleris responsible for about 180 minutes of mobile communication per day.



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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, MCelhas the wider distribution network: 95 per cent sell MCel vouchers against58 per cent who sell Vodacom airtime. Sellers acquire their vouchers atthree sources: the operators own outlets (sixty), resellers (twenty-six) orcolleagues (one). Twenty-three bought their vouchers at the operatorsoutlet 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 byand large cited as the most popular: seventy-one interviewed hawkers statethat this is the most frequently sold voucher. Given a mean daily turnoverof 866 MT, a seller would serve about 40 clients per day.

This number provides us with an indication of the size of the informalvoucher retail network. On the basis of a nationwide survey, Brouwerand Brito (2008) estimate that there are about 800,000 mobile phonesin 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 consistof approximately 10,000 hawkers! Together, the estimated size of themass of hawkers that ock the citys streets, the small monthly revenueseach of them is able (and disposed) to obtain from selling airtime and the

popularity of the smallest voucher lay out the main characteristic of theairtime market of Maputo. To access their clients, the network operatorsmaintain an extensive and cheap supply network that sells small individualvolumes 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 havean edge over the traditional landline-based phone booths, as the lattercharge the landline tariffs to mobile subscribers, which are substantiallyhigher than those within the mobile networks. Mobile phone kiosks areoperated by a South African company called OneCell. People interested insetting up a OneCell kiosk have to buy a kit from the OneCell company.This kit consists, minimally, of a battery-operated phone, an antenna andan umbrella, but can also include a battery and a charger. The complete



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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 thisairtime with a pro t of 50 per cent (for example, US$20 air time is sold forUS$30). During our research, 100 OneCell operators were interviewed inthe same neighbourhoods as the street sellers of airtime. The interviewedoperators all acquired their airtime directly at the operator and never usedintermediaries.

The operators started working with OneCell between past 36 and 3months. On an average, they had their phone booth for 10.9 months. Outof the 100 interviewed operators, seventy-four were male and twenty-sixwere female. About one-third (thirty-eight) were born in Maputo city;twenty-four in Maputo province; eight in the neighbouring provinceGaza and eleven from Inhambane. The remainder (twenty-nine) camefrom provinces in the centre and north of the country. Almost two-thirdsof the sellers ( fty-nine) sell in the neighbourhood where they reside, theremainder (forty-one) in different neighbourhood. All have bene ted fromat least some education; the number of completed classes ranges fromgrade six to eleven (median 8), with the level of education of the femalesellers signi cantly lower than that of their male colleagues (Mann Whitney test, p = 0.027). Compared with the general level of educationin the population of Maputo, kiosk operators are relatively well educated(Table 6).

T ABLE 6Level 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 23.7Primary 1 (7th) 1 6 7 31.1Primary 2 (10th) 73 20 93 28.6Middle level (12th) 0 0 0 16.6Higher level 0 0 0Total 74 26 100 100


Signi cance:

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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T A B L E 7

K e y

C h a r a c t e r

i s t i c s o f

M o b

i l e P h o n e

K i o s k

O p e r a

t o r s

V e n d o r

g e n d e r

N u m b e r

s a m p l e

A v e r a g e

M e d i a n h i g h e s t

c o m p l e t e d c l a s s

O b j e c t i v e

r e v e n u e s

A g e ( y e a r s ) H o u s e h o l d s i z e

N u m b e r o f m e m b e r s

w i t h i n c o m e

D a i l y s a l e s

o f v e n d o r

S u s t a i n

o n e s e l f

S u s t a i n

h o u s e h o l d

M a l e

7 4

2 8

4 . 8

3 . 0

9 8 0 . 0 7

8

3 0

4 4

F e m a l e

2 6

2 8

6 . 3

2 . 7

9 8 0 . 7 7

8

0

2 6

A l l

1 0 0

2 8

5 . 2

2 . 9

9 8 0 . 2 5

8

3 0

7 0

S o u r c e : A n a

l y s i s

b y t h e a u

t h o r .

N o t e :

S i g n

i c a n c e

l e v e

l s :

9 0 p e r c e n t ,

9 5 p e r c e n t a n

d 9 9 p e r c e n

t .



15/21

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 ofmale 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 offemale operators. 7 The expenditures are for personal use (thirty cases) or tosupport the household in general (seventy cases). All thirty operators whouse the revenues for themselves are male, repeating the pattern observedin the case of voucher sellers. 8 This might be associated to the fact that themales 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 pro t margin of 33 per cent, this implies that theaverage net daily income is 46 MT or about US$1.80. The interviewedoperators 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 withUS$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 Cimentois again the area where operators are not resident (Table 8). A two-by-twocross table juxtaposing the central neighbourhoods in UD1 and the other,

peri-urban districts con rms that kiosk operators in the central districtsare 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 in uences his or her total revenues.In Bairro Central and Polana Cimento, the average is with 1170 MT, morethan 1.4 times that of Xiquelene (Table 9). As in the case of the airtimesellers, 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 betweenthe sellers of airtime vouchers and the operators of cellular phone booths.First, there is a lot of similarity. About three-quarters are male and



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T ABLE 8The Relationship between the Neighbourhood of Operation and of Residence

Neighbourhood Urban district

Live in the neighbourhoodwhere they operate

Total Yes No

Magoanine 5 10 0 10Polana Canio 3 9 1 10Hulene 4 8 2 10Chamanculo 2 6 4 10Malhangalene 1 6 4 10

Xipamanine 2 6 4 10Alto Mae 1 5 5 10Bairro Central 1 5 5 10Xiquelene 4 4 6 10Polana Cimento 1 0 10 10Total 59 41 100


T ABLE 9Results of Analysis of Variance for the Relation between

Neighbourhood and Average Gross Revenues for Alpha = 0.05

Neighbourhood Urbandistrict

Sample size

Homogenous groups average revenue

1 2 3

Chamanculo 2 10 847.50Xipamanine 2 10 855.00Xiquelene 4 10 885.00Polana Canio 3 10 885.00Magoanine 5 10 937.50Hulene 4 10 945.00Alto Ma 1 10 975.00 975.00Malhangalene 1 10 1140.00 1140.00Polana Cimento 1 10 1162.50Bairro Central 1 10 1170.00Sig. 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 andoperators very frequently use the revenues from their trades for themselves.Their female counterparts, normally, assume a larger responsibility and



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150 Roland Brouwer


use the revenues from their mobile phone businesses for the bene t of

their entire households. They also tend to live in larger households withmore dependents.In both cases, the neighbourhood where they operate is a key variable to

their business. Revenues are signi cantly higher in the better-off areas. Inthese areas, airtime vouchers and mobile phone services are typically sold

by people who live elsewhere. To a certain extent, this is surprising: thefact that, for example, in Polana Cimento more airtime vouchers are soldthan elsewhere would suggest that the demand for public phone boothswould be lower. Apparently, this relation does not exist.

The most striking disparity is the revenue of the two groups. WhileOneCell operators have to make a considerable investment, their businessturnover is small compared to that of the prepaid airtime sellers. Therevenues from operating OneCell are US$1.80 per day, about halfthe 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 theonly 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 phoneservices. OneCell declined to provide insight in its turnover. However,knowing that the average operator sells about 980 MT of airtime per weekand knowing that there are 10,000 operators, the weekly turnover throughOneCell 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 orUS$2.4 million in Maputo alone. As the assumed number of 10,000 airtimevoucher 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. Thismeans that total monthly gross revenues with the 998,000 stated clients isUS$3.96 million or about US$990,000 per week. Using the 2007 valuesas a basis for the calculation, the OneCell operators contribute almost25 per cent to this turnover.

Over 2006, MCels ARPU for prepaid customers (about 95 per cent ofall mobile phone users) was US$7.59. On the basis of this information,the estimated monthly turnover in 2007 with 2.5 million stated clientsis US$18,975,000 or US$4,744,000 per week. Together, Vodacom and



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MCel estimated gross weekly revenue amounts to US$5.7 million with

3.5 million stated clients. Using the very conservative estimative of theamount turned over by the street vendors (US$2.4 million per week), thecontribution of the street vendors rounds about 70 per cent of the total soldairtime of the companies. Taken together, OneCell operators and streetvendors are responsible for almost 80 per cent of the turnover.

Conclusion

The survey among airtime voucher vendors and mobile phone kioskoperators has shown that the people engaged in these businesses arequite similar. They are relatively young with at least some education, andcon rming the spatiality of poverty, they live in the poorer neighbourhoodsthat surround the city centre. Most of them are male, contradicting thegeneral belief that the informal sector is typically the refuge for women.For many, selling vouchers or operating OneCell phone booths is a meansto strengthen ones personal or household income. People engaging in thisactivity are predominantly male. Revenues are typically used to pay thecosts of schools, transport and clothes besides, of course, general householdexpenditures on food. Women tend to use the revenues to support ahousehold, whereas men tend to use it for their personal bene ts.

The average revenue of the hawkers is estimated at about US$3.50 perday. With working weeks of 6 to 7 days, this would result into a monthlyincome 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 theincome is dependent on the area where they operate, as turnover is larger

in the wealthier neighbourhoods. Moreover, in many cases, street vendorsare forced to transfer part of the discount obtained at his or her supplierto 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 alarger 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 Maputooperate about 10,000 hawkers selling airtime. This informal labour force is,therefore, at least twenty- ve times larger than the formal labour force.



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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 keyrole in resolving the challenge the mobile phone operators face to supply alarge number of small consumers. Together, they guarantee at least 80 percent of the total airtime sales. Together, they carry the weight of economicoperations of million dollar corporations who operate on a market withextremely low purchasing power, working against an income that barelykeeps 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. Signi cant at 99 per cent. Chi-square is 30.40. The critical Chi-square for a signi cance

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 signi cant at 95 per cent and 99 per

cent respectively.8. The difference is signi cant at 99 per cent. Fishers exact test produces a p = 0.000.

9. Signi cant at 99 per cent. Chi-square is 9.85. The critical Chi-square for a signi canceof 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 otherurban districts with an average turnover of 893 MT is signi cant at 99 per cent (Studentst-test, p = 0.000, equal variances not assumed, two-tailed).

11. The difference is signi cant at 99 per cent; Chi-square is 13.14 in 2 2 table.

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