When civil strife actually improves ground-floor connectivity

Per my recent feature for WPR on telecoms, warlords are pretty good for cellphone connectivity--as in, they want it and everybody whom they either put on the run or force into fending for themselves want it.

Somalia appears to be the classic example here:

Banks barely existed in this war-torn African nation a decade ago.  Now, Somali residents can bank over their mobile phones.

The rapid evolution of technology in Somalia--and people's access to it--comes as several telecommunications companies here jockey for customers amid the absence of any government-regulated phone or Internet-access.  The competition to supply phone service has stoked the nascent revival of Somalia's shattered economy, and it shows that some complex business can thrive even in one of Africa's least developed markets.

Technology players moving in come from China, Korea and Europe, or basically New Core Asia in sub-Saharan Africa and established Euro players in the north.

My bit with the Core-Gap map has always been:  this is globalization's frontier and where it's moving is where you'll find churn and violence and frontier-integration, meaning both the good and the bad concentrated.  It is its own socio-economic revolution on top of whatever else is going on--both good and bad.

Naturally, Al Shabaab, the local radical Islamic group, fights this trend, saying such connectivity violates sharia. Oh, but they'll allow it if you pay them "taxes" and let them dictate its spread.

Classic stuff.