WSMoreOrLess: Mobiles or lightbulbs
More or Less
BBC
4.6 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 18 March 2016
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Mobile technology is spreading fast in Africa, and one lawyer Gerald Abila has done the maths and worked out that there are more mobile phones than lightbulbs in Uganda. We look at his figures and find that measuring them is more complicated than you might imagine. There are certainly numbers you can choose to demonstrate this, but are they the right ones? Thyroid cancer has gone up after the Fukushima accident - but it's not what you think. Japanese authorities were worried about the impact of radiation that escaped into the atmosphere after a nuclear plant was damaged during the earthquake of 2011. Around 300,000 under-19s received ultrasound scans to look for abnormalities, and the results appeared alarming. One expert claimed there were 30 times more cases than might have been expected. But a group of epidemiologists have since questioned this - they say if you survey so many people, you will always find more cases. Producer: Charlotte McDonald/Laura Gray
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is the short edition of More or Less, first broadcast on the BBC World Service. |
| 0:05.0 | Hello and welcome to More or Less on the BBC World Service. |
| 0:09.0 | We're your weekly guide to the numbers in the news and in life. |
| 0:12.0 | I'm Charlotte. |
| 0:13.4 | And I'm Laura Gray. |
| 0:14.8 | Later in the program we hear why the number of thyroid cancer cases has gone up near the |
| 0:19.5 | Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan. Is it because of radiation? Maybe not. |
| 0:25.0 | But first, loyal listener Mohit from Singapore emailed the team to question a claim he heard |
| 0:31.1 | on the World Service series The Compass. |
| 0:33.6 | You come from a country where we have more mobile phones than light bulbs. |
| 0:38.0 | Yes, you heard that correctly. In Uganda, there are more mobile phones than light bulbs. |
| 0:44.0 | Is it really true that light bulbs are outnumbered by... |
| 0:47.0 | We contacted Gerald Abila, a lawyer based in Uganda who provides legal advice via mobile phones, |
| 0:56.5 | and it was his voice that you heard first in that clip. |
| 1:00.0 | He first heard this claim in 2009. It's often repeated, so he decided to do his own calculations. |
| 1:06.0 | Looking at the government statistics on the number of people who have electric lighting, |
| 1:10.0 | Jevald made an assumption that each person would have one light bulb. |
| 1:14.0 | Here he is. |
| 1:15.0 | Now my assumption was if each person in this household that use electricity for lighting |
| 1:21.0 | was to be represented by a light bulb, then would end up with |
| 1:24.9 | around 5 million light bulbs in Uganda. |
| 1:28.4 | Now obviously this is a very rough guess, not to mention this isn't even taking into account lights in businesses or offices or |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.