“We all misread the market,” said South African Michael Joseph, chief executive officer of Safaricom, one of two cellular-telephone service providers in Kenya.

This is a quote from a fascinating AP story about how the use of cell phones is skyrocketing in Africa. According to the story:

The mistake, providers say, was to make plans based on gross domestic product figures, which ignore the strong informal economy, and to assume that because landline use was low, there was little demand for phones.

And more:

Harun is one of a rapidly swelling army of wired-up Africans — an estimated 100 million of the continent’s 906 million people. Another is Omar Abdulla Saidi, phoning in from his sailboat on the Zanzibar coast looking for the port that will give him the biggest profit on his freshly caught red snapper, tuna and shellfish.

Just another lesson showing that capitalism raises living standards and is capable of overcoming some pretty formidable barriers put in its way by the state.

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