Region’s Internet and mobile-savvy youth changing meaning of poverty

From The East African, Nairobi, Kenya
By JOHN GITHONGO and JAMES NDUKO

A month ago we spent a few days in Mwanza’s giant informal settlement of Mabatani and Bulamba, a rural fishing village in Bunda District.

Our host in Mabatani was a gregarious primary school teacher, let’s call her Mama Machapu, still mourning the passing of her husband six months earlier; and in Bulamba, Mzee Soja, an elderly ex-serviceman in the Tanzanian army, and his middle-aged wife, Mama Taifa.

Mama Machapu was a mother of seven children, five of them living in various Tanzanian cities.

She lived with her two teenage schoolgoing sons, a shy, polite granddaughter and a young house-help.

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