Russell Southwood worked as a journalist before becoming one of the three founders of Comedia. He later founded the consultancy and research practice, Balancing Act, which has focused on telecoms, internet and media in sub-Saharan Africa over the last 20 years. He has previously written Less Walk, More Talk – How Celtel and the Mobile Phone Changed Africa, and with Kelly Wong, Building a Data Ecosystem for Food Security and Sustainability, Agtech V3.0.

In this episode he talks with Owen Kelly about his recent book Africa 2.0 which, its publisher says, “provides an important history of how two technologies – mobile calling and internet – were made available to millions of sub-Saharan Africans, and the impact they have had on their lives. … It analyses how the mobile phone fundamentally changed communications in sub-Saharan Africa and the ways Africans have made these technologies part of their lives, opening up a very different future”.