Abstract

This study was conducted across the selected rural communities with mobile telephony networks in Southwest Nigeria. Data were collected from randomly sampled 222 rural dwellers with the use of an interview guide and interactive discussions and analysed with the use of descriptive and inferential statistics. The results showed that 83.4% of the respondents were using basic mobile phones, 78.4% of them largely used the phone for voice calls, all (100%) of them used the phones for interpersonal communication, 89.2% used it for playing games and 84.2% used fit for listening to radio and music. Furthermore, mobile phones were used by 88.3% of the respondents for market creation or attracting customers, 77.9% used them for sourcing market information and used by 72.5% to facilitate the sales of goods and services. Interactive discussions with the respondents showed that usage of mobile phones had dynamically reconfigured the pattern of their social and economic engagement. Results of the binary logistic regression showed a significant association between mobile phones and the social and economic engagement of the rural dwellers at a coefficient ((? >1) greater than 1. It was concluded that, to an extent, mobile phone usage had a reconfiguration effect on the social and economic engagement of the rural dwellers; with the recommendation that the use of mobile phones should be intensified by the rural dwellers.

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