Kenyans Tweet to Tackle Crime

The crime rate is down in the village of Lanet Umoja, thanks to administrative chief Francis Kariuki's tweets about robberies, missing children and stolen farm animals.

Chief Kariuki has 300 official Twitter followers, plus thousands of local residents without smartphones who access his tweets via third-party mobile apps.

Most tweets deal with petty theft, broadcasting news like, "There is a brown and white sheep which has gone missing with a nylon rope around its neck and it belongs to Mwangi's father".

Others, however, have prevented serious injury. At 4 a.m. one day, Kariuki received a call that thugs were breaking into a schoolteacher's home. He immediately raised the alarm via Twitter, prompting village residents to gather outside the house and drive off the robbers.

"My wife and I were terrified", said teacher Michael Kimotho. "But the alarm raised by the chief helped".

The chief's Twitter campaign may soon widen to promote countrywide peace during upcoming elections in Kenya, where one thousand people died in postelection violence four years ago.

As mobile phone use continues to rise in Africa, more people are using their handsets to tackle daily concerns from starvation to banking and medical care. In a continent with undeveloped infrastructure, people often access basic services through mobile devices, bringing everyday conveniences to even the most economically challenged regions.

In October, Somalis received donations from humanitarian aid organizations via a mobile money transfer system. This system bypassed the region's al Shabaab insurgent rulers, who control much of the countryside and have banned outside food assistance.

Mobile finance is thriving across Africa, helping countries like Ghana boost their economies through the MTN banking system. MTN lets mobile phone owners conduct banking transactions for $0.65 per month, freeing Ghanaians from often unmanageable checking account fees.

And health care is improving in Kenya, where medical researchers texted local health care workers for six months about how to detect and treat malaria symptoms.

As mobile adoption continues to grow in Africa, the continent stands to benefit from programs like these that promote health, commerce and ward off crime and starvation.