Question

[1] One day, I was sitting in my house, in Namibia, reading a U.S. newspaper on my cell phone.

[2] Oh, I should backtrack for a minute here. Yes, Africa has cell phones. In fact, every Peace Corps volunteer in Namibia has a cell phone, as well as every adult Namibian I knew, and most teenagers. Cell phone coverage reaches every major town in Namibia, and most of the minor ones, as well—even small villages.

[3] And this isn't only Namibia. Cell phones are everywhere in Africa and even though one in four Africans has a cell phone, you rarely see anyone talking on them—you see, it's simply too expensive. Instead, everyone is text messaging. Text messaging, you see, is very cheap. For $10 U.S. dollars you can walk into a shop in Namibia, and walk out with a cell phone—not a very nice one, mind you, but a fully functional one—that has enough prepaid credit to send 100 text messages a day for three months.

[4] So, back to reading the news on my phone; there was an article about a project in the U.S. running a text messaging hotline to answer sexual education questions.

[5] This set off a few bells.

[6] Hey, that could work in Namibia, a country where one in five people is HIV positive, and lack of knowledge is commonly cited as the leading factor in the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. So, I spent a weekend tapping at my laptop keyboard, and by Monday I had a computer program than ran something of a virtual text messaging call center.

–“A Story of a Peace Corps Volunteer in Namibia,”
Rashid Khan

How do paragraphs 2 and 3 support Khan’s idea that a text-messaging hotline could work in Namibia?

The paragraphs explain the impact of HIV/AIDS on the population of Namibia.
The paragraphs explain the need for funding to improve cellular coverage for medical care.
The paragraphs explain Namibians’ tendency to make phone calls to save money.
The paragraphs explain that cell phones are affordable and cellular service is available.

Answer 1

The paragraphs explain that cell phones are affordable and cellular service is available.

They show widespread phone ownership, broad coverage, and cheap texting—conditions that make a text-messaging hotline feasible.