Who has done more to help Africa during the last couple of decades: the people arguing for more charitable and state aid to Africa, or the people who argued for free market economic policies around the world, Africa included?

Perhaps you do not agree with me that the latter sort of people have done more good for Africa than the former. But if you read this New York Times article ("Cellphones Catapult Rural Africa to 21st Century") about the explosive growth of portable phone use in Africa, and about how this growth could not have happened without privatization, you might at least concede that this is a reasonable question.

Early predictions about African portable phone enthusiasm – to be more precise: about the lack of it – were based on the sluggish performances of the state monopoly suppliers of land lines. It was said that Africans didn't care for telephones, but the truth was that most Africans never got the chance to use them. But with telecoms privatization, new companies sprang up selling cellphone services to anyone they could interest, and it turned out that millions of Africans were very interested indeed.

Africa has an average of just one land line for every 33 people, but cellphones are enabling millions of people to skip a technological generation and bound straight from letter-writing to instant messaging.

The economic impact of many millions of Africans, especially rural Africans, using portable phones is beyond calculation. Successful economies work through massive amounts of information being exchanged quickly, enabling all the participants involved to manage their affairs efficiently and productively. Good phone services thus go the very heart of economic development. With good phones, everything else works better.

One pilot program allows about 100 farmers in South Africa's northeast to learn the prevailing prices for produce in major markets, crucial information in negotiations with middlemen.

Health-care workers in the rural southeast summon ambulances to distant clinics via cellphone.

One woman living on the Congo River, unable even to write her last name, tells customers to call her cellphone if they want to buy the fresh fish she sells.

This is an article that Friedrich Hayek would have loved to read.

(Brian Micklethwait writes here).