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Mobile Phones Use In Ghana: Focus on Early Adopters

In this feature article we identify for the development community the types of people in Ghana who are more likely to adopt technological innovations first and also potentially act as technical champions within their communities or social groups. In addition, analyzing early adopters’ use patterns can shed light on how more-recent users are likely to behave in the future.

Tables 1 through 3 compare the 235 respondents (12 percent of the total sample of the 2009 AudienceScapes Survey in Ghana) who said they purchased their first mobile phone more than 5 years ago with the 1,080 (53 percent) who purchased phones within the last 5 years.

Table 1 shows that a large proportion of early adopters were men under 40, with higher-than-average incomes and educational attainment and strong English-language skills. They are thus a promising target group for development organizations focused on the rapid introduction of new technological applications.

Table 1: 
             

Viewed from the opposite demographic angle, Table 2 lists the percentage of people in various demographic categories who were early adopters, to confirm that the previous profile is not merely a result of the survey sample mix itself. Rather, the table indicates that mobile phone take-up rates during the earliest years of the mobile phone revolution (prior to July 2004) were highest among men, those 30-44 at the time of the survey (so under 40 when they purchased their first phone), and people with the highest levels of education and income.

The share of people buying mobile phones more than 5 years ago was also higher in urban areas, particularly in Accra. This suggests that (in the absence of specially targeted dissemination programs) women, rural residents, and people with lower socio-economic status would be less likely to adopt a technology such as a mobile phone when it first becomes available. What is not known is whether this would be the result of cost, availability, awareness or level-of-interest issues.

Table 2
              

Table 3 breaks down use patterns by gender to highlight more-intensive use by men. The table also shows that both male and female early adopters are significantly heavier daily users of various phone functions than people who had bought their first phone more recently.

This may indicate that phone owners become more comfortable with and dependent on multiple applications over time. However, this cannot be proven from the data, and it may also be the case that the personal traits of early adopters render them likely to use mobile phone functions more intensively.

Table 3