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Can mobile telephony improve commercial supply-chains in developing countries? Informational challenges (absence, uncertainty, asymmetry) shape the working of  markets and commerce in many developing countries. For developing country microenterprises,  which form the bulk of all enterprises worldwide, this shapes the characteristics of their supply chains. It reduces the chances that business and trade will emerge. It keeps supply chains localised and intermediated. It makes trade within those supply chains slow, costly and risky.

This paper is a case study of the impact of mobile telephony on  SMEs in the clothweaving sector in Nigeria.

It finds that there are ways in which costs and risks are being reduced and time saved, often by substitution of journeys. But it also finds a continuing need for journeys and physical meetings due to issues of trust, design intensity, physical inspection and exchange, and interaction complexity.

As a result, there are few signs of the delocalisation or disintermediation predicted by some commentators. An economising effect of mobile phones on supply chain processes may therefore co-exist with the entrenchment of supply chain structures and a growing "competitive divide" between those with and without access to telephony.

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