I would like to purchase "phonebooks/directories of every mobile phone
listed for a business in Africa. I do not want online
phonebooks/directories. Please include the company/agency name,
contact name and phone number so that I can make payment and shipping
arrangements. Email addresses, websites, weights, and costs would be
nice but are not required.

Thank You,
Joel

Dear joel1357,

After I have noticed that your other requests for printed mobile phone
directories from various regions of the world remained unanswered -
simply because there are no answers -, I had no hope I could find out
something useful concerning this question. But though the odds were
more than frustratingly bad, I started searching on this topic. And I
was successful, even though on a modest scale.

I searched all pages on African mobile phone providers I could find,
and finally I had a complete list of printed mobile phone directories
on that continent. Given that I did not miscount, the total number of
such directories is one (in numbers: 1). It is published by:

SONITEL (Société Nigérienne des Télécommunications - Nigerian
Telecommunications Society)
Avenue de l'Uranium
BP 208
Niamey
Niger
Phone: +227722998
Fax: +227733685
E-Mail: sonitel@intnet.ne
No names of contact persons available.

The directory is called "Annuaire Officiel Des Abonnes Au Telephone,
Telex, Telecopie, Cellulaire" (Official directory of telephone, telex,
fax and cellular phone subscribers).

Maybe some other similar African directories are somewhere out there,
well-hidden and undiscoverable. But I doubt it, this one is very
likely to be the only one of its kind. So this really is the full list
of printed African cellphone directories.

A selection of search terms used:
cellphone directory african:
://www.google.de/search?q=cellphone+directory+african&ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&hl=de&meta=
"mobile phone" directory african:
://www.google.de/search?q=%22mobile+phone%22+directory+african&ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&hl=de&meta=
annuaire officiel cellulaire:
://www.google.de/search?hl=de&ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&newwindow=1&q=annuaire+officiel+cellulaire&meta=

I hope this is, despite of the humble, but nevertheless comprehensive,
content, what you were looking for.
Regards,
Scriptor

I know it was a tough question and thanks for the effort to find the anwser.

Joel, 

While the original inquiry of a phone book perse isn't so hard, the
concept of getting each business Cell phone in AFrica might be tricky.
 Here's why:

Most countries, like the US, have many different cellular carriers. 
http://www.cellular.co.za/

If you click on the sidebar, under AFrica/S. AFrica it will bring you
to a rather expansive list of the various different kinds of cellular,
analog, packet and radio carriers.   Each country has differences in
the companies they use for this, and many countries (such as Benin)
may have one ore more of a specific carrier (ex.  Benin has three
seperate carriers).  The site also has listings for the total number
of cellular connections.  I couldn't find anything on phonebooks
merely for cellular communications however.   Ergo, this was not
answer worthy, but it might help.

Bitmaven-ga

Dear Joel1357-ga, 

You should also consider that most Mobile phones in Africa are sold on
a "pay-as-you-go" basis, In other words subscribers pay in advance for
an amount of airtime. As a result the Mobile Phone companies do not
have to deal with issues of credit handling for these groups of
customers and the billing systems to cater for them are relatively
simplistic.

"Pay-as-you-go" service is sold like a normal retail transaction and
generally does not require the customer to lodge any personal details
with the Mobile Phoen company. In other words for a significant number
of customers the Mobile Phone companies are unable to match phone
numbers to names, thus producing a comprehensive directory will be
very difficult.

Regards
indigoblue-ga