Mobile technologies supporting vital information services to farmers in Africa: Some ICT4 Agriculture success stories

With the ICT4Ag conference well underway in Kigali, it seemed a timely opportunity to highlight some of the ICT4Ag initiatives that have been put into action across Africa, with a focus on the power of mobile devices to bring real benefits to rural farmers and significantly improve their lives and those of the communities in which they live. I’ve tried to bring together three different initiatives in different African states, to give an overview of how this technology can be put to such effective use in meeting the challenges that farmers are facing, and to present them in a way that can inform the uninitiated as much as those with a keen interest in ICT4D.

Ghana: SMS assists local farmers to improve the results of their efforts in rice farming

Non-governmental organisations and G8 member states have made Ghana one of their top priorities in terms of providing financial support and advice to improve farming methods and to help farmers harness the new technologies that can assist them in getting the most from the resources they have available. Under the G8 banner, the New Alliance of Food Security and Nutrition was launched in 2012 with commitments from African leaders, private sector partners and G8 members to make substantial investments towards improving food security, agricultural practices and nutrition levels for 50 million people by 2022. The ‘Feed the Future’ project is their main US initiative for input and involvement in the New Alliance, which includes a significant level of focus on Ghana.

At a far more local level, an article and accompanying video by reporter Nan Boakye-Yiadom for Ghanaian website and radio station Citifm Online was a fascinating source of information on mobile tech helping farmers in the field, as it gave such an interesting and and accessible account of the focus of the article – rural farmer Abdul Rahman Takoro and his family – and the difficulties and challenges they face with subsistence rice farming, and trying to make it an affordable and even profitable venture.

The article explains how only three years ago, Abdul could not afford to send all his eight children to school, unable to earn a living to provide for his family through rice farming as he lacked both the resources and agricultural education to be able to make the farm a success.  Thanks to the involvement of Esoko, a private communication company in Ghana, Abdul was able to benefit from an SMS message system to gain information on weather changes, improved farming methods and market prices. The article explains the difficulties that farmers face in getting the information and the help they need through traditional means:

‘…Currently the only way most farmers get such information is through extension officers. The government employees meet with farmers to provide information, but they barely reach a quarter of the total number of farmers in Ghana. As well, according to information from Ghana’s Finance Ministry, about 70 per cent of extension officers will retire from active service in the next three years…’

The article goes on the explain how the Esoko initiative works, and reinforces the idea that private companies and contractors have a huge part to play in assisting with these projects – which in the end can help to improve the economy in the company in which they operate, by increasing the contribution that farming can make to the nation’s GDP:

‘…Esoko has representatives who visit about 50 different markets in the various regions each day and compile the going price of foods. They relay that information to the Esoko headquarters, where it is packaged into simple and comprehensive SMS and distributed to the farmers and traders who are also subscribed on the platform. Farmers also receive information on weather patterns, when to plough their land, when to sow, apply fertilizer, check weeds and harvest…Takoro is one of about 120,000 farmers in the Northern Region making use of the information from Esoko. He’s been receiving the SMS messages for two years. “What we gain from Esoko is immeasurable,” he said. “They alert us with prices in markets nationwide, tell me whatever I produce I can send it there to sell and get interest. They also help us with weather forecasts too…” …Takoro says with the information he can now decide whether to send his produce to the market for sale or sell it to middle men and women, considering which of the options will make him get more money…’

Soil testing results by SMS: Crop Nutrition providing innovative service to Kenyan farmers

Crop Nutrition, and agribusiness company, have set up an innovative service to speed up the process of soil testing and analysis for farmers in Kenya.

Crop Nutrition provide special specimen bags to farmers through their network of field advisors, who train the farmers in the correct methods for collecting the samples, which are then delivered to Crop Nutrition’s laboratory via local agro dealers. Costs are kept low due to the high volumes involved and the level of sophistication of the company’s testing equipment, which also contributes to a much faster turnaround than other more traditional methods of soil testing. The results are then sent via SMS message directly to the farmer, again cutting down on the time it takes from initial sample collection to when the farmer is able to act on the results of their analysis.

USAID’s briefing paper explains how Crop Nutrition assume that local representatives will assist farmers with understanding the implications of the results, if needed, and the importance of soil testing in global farming:

‘…Crop Nutrition works on the expectation that if the results and recommendations are unclear to the farmers, they will be interpreted for the farmers by the agro dealer or field advisor. Soil testing is important for any farmer to know what minerals their soil is deficient in and what type of fertilizer or other inputs may be used to increase soil health and fertility, yields, and resistance to pests and disease…’

The paper can be viewed at via the e-agriculture.org website, (which also provides further information on this initiative), and provides further information on the users and business model of the project, the costs of which are provided entirely by Crop Nutrition, again a private company, as part of their operational expenses. One additional point from the paper is worth reposting here, and that is the anticipated impact of the initiative:

‘…Crop Nutrition lab reports include technical recommendations so that farmers apply the correct fertilizers, lime or other inputs to reduce production costs and improve yields. When correctly used by farmers, this information can contribute to larger crop yields. Agro dealers also receive a small commission for facilitating the service…’

Uganda: ‘Community Knowledge Workers’ provide farmers with invaluable information and market data in exchange for completing surveys

The Grameen Foundation was set up in 1997 to assist communities in developing countries to address their own challenges and reach their full potential, through the provision and application of the right tools and resources. Their website explains further the ethos behind the work they do in trying to help people in the world’s poorest countries:

‘…Our collaborative approach to poverty alleviation recognizes the multidimensional and complex nature of global poverty. We work with private sector companies, non-governmental organizations, government agencies and others to ensure we achieve lasting impact in the regions where we work.’

As explained in an article from the ICT in Agriculture website and as part of Grameen’s work developing new agricultural programmes in Uganda, the organisation has set up the Community Knowledge Worker (CKW) programme with financial support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The program involved the training of over 800 village-level representatives (CKW’s) to provide agricultural ‘extension services’ to farmers in exchange for their participation in completing mobile device-based surveys. These extension services include the provision of advice in relation to agricultural methods, livestock, crop diseases, weather forecasts and other relevant information. In return, the information provided by the completed surveys helps Grameen and their partner organisations with their research to build up a clearer picture of the issues the farmers are facing – which in turn helps in providing the solutions and advice they are provided with.

This simple, cyclical process has helped local farming communities in Uganda by improving their agricultural yields, whilst the farmers involved have been able to achieve better prices through greater market knowledge of the products they produce. It has also created employment through the recruitment of CKW’s, who, as the article suggests, can further increase the benefits of this two-way cyclical approach, by providing solar-energy services whilst in the field alongside their survey data-collection activities, and thereby increase their earnings at the same time:

‘…CKWs are trained to 1) provide a link to agricultural research institutions and extension services and administer surveys, and 2) to set up off-grid electrical charging micro-enterprises using solar energy. These enterprises can earn CWKs as much as 40 USD/month, which doubles the 1.25 USD/day previously earned by 60% of CKWs.’

The article states that due to access to CKW’s, farmers in Eastern Uganda have seen a 17 percent increase in the prices they achieve for maize compared to those who do not have access to these resources, a clear indication that when applied simply and effectively, with a combination of technology and common-sense human input, these new innovations can be highly successful in improving people’s lives.

ICT for education in Iraq: In search of good news

In a recent announcement from the regional industry news website arabianindustry.com (and also featured on a number of other similar sites), we were told that a deal had been signed to bring the first LTE TDD (Long-Term Evolution Time-Division Duplex) network to Iraq, thus paving the way for 4G capability further down the line. The deal, signed between Tishknet, an Iraqi internet service provider, and the mobile communication giant Ericsson, breaks new ground in the region, bringing high speed mobile connections to Iraqi customers fortunate enough to have the necessary technology to utilise them.

Somewhat inevitably, the services are planned for launch in the Kurdistan region of north east Iraq, which has been a well-documented and celebrated success story compared to much of the country over the last ten years, in terms of its rapid progress in social and economic development. As a BBC article put it back in March of this year:

‘…In the troubled security and political landscape of Iraq, the autonomous northern province of Kurdistan has emerged in the past 10 years as an inspiring success story…’

As most people with an interest beyond general global news stories are aware, let alone those with a specific interest in the region, ‘…troubled security and political landscape…’ is putting it mildly in Iraq, and the success of the Kurdistan region, with its autonomy being initially gained in 1991 and a proud and determined history of self-determination and identity, is the exception to the rule.

So what of the progress in the rest of Iraq, not just in terms of the expansion of telecommunications, but in relation to greater access to ICT-related education, and the increase in opportunities that it can bring? Access to 4G is a ‘nice-to-have’, but is it really what people need, in a country that only five years ago had an unemployment rate of nearly 30% among young people up to the age of 24, and where the fear of violence and death is still an everyday concern for much of the population?  The number of those out of work has ‘improved’ since then, but many argue the improvement is as much down to people giving up looking for work and thus taking themselves out of the equation, because the lack of security and stability continues to make regular work an unsafe and unsustainable option. So, whilst personal security and the safety of their communities is still the primary concern for many Iraqis, it is understandable that specific concerns about education, both at school age and college level, and in terms of the focus of this blog (that is, the expansion of ICT through education and the opportunities and benefits that can bring), are not perhaps their top priority.

That is not to say that people don’t want them to be. Up to 1991, Iraq’s rich cultural history and oil wealth had provided for very high levels of literacy and educational attainment, and had it not been for several periods of civil war, unrest and oppressive crack downs by incumbent regimes (Saddam Hussein, for instance, banned internet access when it started to become widely available), many argue that the country would at least be on a par in terms of education and technological development with the other states in the region.

As it stands, after 2003 there was little infrastructure to support widespread internet access in the country, and those few individuals who had the knowledge and resources to gain access were having to rely on dial-up networks for some time until limited broadband services were put into place, largely through partnerships between government and foreign third-party providers. Added to this, the ruination of the education system resulted in a drought in the ICT educational skillset; first through years of repression which led to much of the academic community leaving the country due to security fears, or in the worse cases facing death or detention, and the subsequent wholesale destruction of educational buildings and infrastructure. As a result of the invasion in 2003 and the aftermath of violence that followed, many schools and educational establishments were destroyed, and with particular resonance here, thanks to the looting and lawlessness that followed the invasion, the vast majority of public-owned ICT resources were also lost.

In his speech to the Geneva International Centre for Justice earlier this year, Dirk Adriaensens summarised this bleak situation, which goes some way to explain why it is taking such a long time for Iraq to recover in this area:

‘…Iraq’s education system, once vaunted as the most advantaged in the region, has suffered a patterned process of degradation and dismantling. Iraqi schools and universities were bombed and destroyed. Under the occupation, according to a report by the United Nations University International Leadership Institute in Jordan, some 84% of Iraq’s institutions of higher education have been burned, looted, or destroyed. Some 2.000 laboratories need to be re-equipped and 30.000 computers need to be procured and installed nationwide….’

Progress and Initiatives

As suggested in the title of this post, good news stories about education, particularly in relation to ICT, are hard to come by when researching on Iraq, but some efforts have clearly been made in order to create an environment in which people can once again flourish and gain the skills they need to take advantage of the new opportunities that ICT can bring, in a safe and hopefully stable environment; and not just in the relatively prosperous region of Kurdistan.

UNESCO recognised the importance of ICT as being central to any modern educational curriculum, and a driver for social prosperity towards improving the lives of Iraqis and their communities. This understanding led to the setting up of the ICT in Education for Iraq project, which began in 2007 and was the first major initiative to try to tackle the problems the country faced in this area. Their awareness of these problems is expressed clearly on their website:

‘…The education system in Iraq, prior to 1991, was one of the best in the region. However, following Iraq’s wars and years of international sanctions, the education sector has suffered greatly. Moreover, the country’s ICT facilities and applications are very weak; most teachers have either very little or no ICT literacy at all, and thus are ill-suited to play their role to help create a new generation of ICT literate students. Delivering ICT in education system in Iraq will help overcome this problem by fostering greater ICT literacy among students, teachers, school principals, and Ministry of Education (MoE) staff. This renewal of Iraq’s educational system is vital because Iraqi youth will determine their country’s future…’

The site goes on to list the progress that has been made in achieving the goals that the project set out. In summary, these mainly consist of a considerable amount of training and development for Iraqi Ministry of Education staff and practitioners, as well as providing more trained teachers and the restructuring and remodelling of areas of the curriculum, so as to take advantage and gain experience from e-learning facilities and similar resources.

More detailed information can be found here: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/iraq-office/education/primary-and-secondary-education/ict-in-education/

The USA International Development Agency (USAID), perhaps for obvious reasons bearing in mind the country’s continued involvement in the country since the invasion in 2003, has also been heavily involved in various developmental and humanitarian efforts, and these have focussed in part on the improvement and rebuilding of the educational infrastructure. Under the banner ‘Ensuring Iraqi Communities Benefit from Local Oil Wealth’ USAID’s Yana Spasojevic documents the efforts made towards rebuilding through their assistance of local community action groups, in her blog post from April last year:

‘…USAID’s Community Action Program has fostered partnerships between Iraqi communities, local governments, and other stakeholders that have empowered over 160 community action groups to implement more than 630 projects focused at restoration of essential services in southern Iraq since 2008. Iraqi community groups have rebuilt schools, bridges, and roads, and have promoted entrepreneurship, the use of information technology, and sports. These efforts have benefitted and improved lives of over two million people in southern Iraq…’

The rest of the blog post can found here: http://blog.usaid.gov/2012/04/ensuring-iraqi-communities-benefit-from-local-oil-wealth/

There have been other initiatives, mainly by similar organisations (The British Council, for instance, have provided significant assistance to support existing initiatives in teacher training and school standards), but perhaps because of the complex and continuing high-risk security situation in the country, there is little to speak of in terms of positive, personal accounts at a local level of improvements in access to ICT education, or improved connectivity and digital infrastructure making a difference to people’s lives, the like of which I have focussed on elsewhere. This is a great pity, considering the once proud nation in terms of its cultural and educational sophistication that Iraq was.

What I hope is that like many of other locations I have ‘visited’ through this blog, I can look again at Iraq in the not too distance future, and refer to some real ‘good news’ stories, written by people on the ground who’s accounts show a country that has moved on enough from its civil strife to provide its people with freely available education in new and emerging technologies, that can help to improve their lives and those of their communities. Practical education, that can equip them with the ICT skills needed to open doors, develop home-grown solutions to the challenges the country faces, and take advantage of the opportunities that the world has to offer, in a safer, more secure environment.