Using Mobile Phones for Environmental Protection in Africa: The Equatorial Africa Deposition Network Case Study

Under the context of a telemetry project aimed at investigating the atmospheric deposition of nutrients into the African Great Lakes, this chapter explores how mobile phones can be used for environmental protection. It provides an overview of the Equatorial Africa Deposition Network (EADN), an ambitious transboundary project that tries to identify sources of eutrophication, a major threat to the African Great Lakes integrity. Agencies like the Lake Victoria Region Local Authorities Cooperation, the Lake Tanganyika Authority or the Lake Malawi Evaluation Group must see on mobile phones a regional channel that can be used to spread a common message. The EADN project was designed in a way that will extent from areas where biomass burning is intensively practice in central and southern Africa, to the west of the continent in which Sahelian dust is expected to be a major source of Phosphorus.