There has been a rapid griwrh of mobile phones in Africa with the Observer newspaper in 2011 declaring in a headline that half of Africas one billion population has a mobile phone. A recent expert assessment concluded that half the population of Africa will have smartphones by 2017 stimulatedby rapidly falling prices.

This groth of mobile phones is being taken advantage of in a number of sectors. In Kenya, for example, mobiles form the backbone of a new branchless banking system called M-Pesa which is now used by 15 million people in place of building a costly network of branches.

It is reasonable to assume that over the next decade smartphones in Africa will become cheaper and more pervasive. In what ways are smartphones being used to extend lifelong learning opportunities, particularly in rural areas ? In what ways might this potention be extended? PASCAL welcomes information on successful innovations across Sub-Sahara Africa either as blogs on this site or as papers for the June 2016 PASCAL International Conference at trhe University of Glasgow. Information on this conference will be released in October.