South Africa’s history is one of migration and mobility, due to successive centuries of continental migrations, its colonial history, the separate development policies pursued between 1948 and 1990, its social diversity and its relative political openness. During previous centuries, migration and mobility were key features of South Africa with workers migrating from rural areas and neighbouring states to the mines and towns to work, often in menial, low-income jobs. In the late nineteenth and twentieth century, mining and subsequent manufacturing activity laid the foundations for the growth of a services economy. Following democratisation in 1994, South Africa became an attractive destination for the mobile middle class and for people working in service industries across the continent. These and other trends laid the foundation for the emergence of an era of mobile communications in Africa.