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In a ground breaking initiative eDivorce a South African online DIY divorce platform launched the world's first mobile phone based diy divorce service. The Divorce process can now be commenced by using a mobile phone.
The service was developed by local Cape Town mobile applications developer eSplash. Users of the service simply sms the word DIVORCE to 34994 and are then able to download and complete a questionnaire that triggers the eDivorce platform's document generation component. Users must have WAP enabled on their phones. "This is definitely a world first in utilizing mobile phones to commence a legal process" says Pieter Joubert an attorney and one of the founding members of eDivorce.
"People accessing the Internet in South Africa via cell phones are not going to graduate to use computers. Most of them primarily access the Internet through their mobile phones and use social networks only on their mobile phones, for example, Facebook, Vodacom's service, The Grid, and MXIT South Africa’s largest social networks on mobile phones", says Bertus Preller an attorney and founder of eDivorce.
The edivorce.co.za service makes South Africa`s divorce system more accessible and more affordable to the general public by affording the option to start the divorce process online. With people struggling to make ends meet during the credit crunch we face, eDivorce.co.za is a definite alternative for couples seeking an uncontested divorce in South Africa. Divorce is a process that few people undertake without serious consideration of its consequences. In offering such a service, eDivorce notes on its website that the goal is not to sanction or promote divorce but to provide a simple online service for making the divorce process less expensive and stressful.
All across the African continent, in almost every country, Internet usage via cell phones is growing like by several hundred percent, year-on-year. For example, in the top 12 countries in Africa, the number of overall page views on cell phones increased by 422% between April 2008 and April 2009. Over a similar period, the number of unique users increased by 169%.
