8/8/2019 FACET Brief: ICT to Enhance Farm Extension Services in Africa

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 ICT to Enhance Farm Extension Services in Africa Last updated November 2010

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BRIEFING PAPER 

ICT TO ENHANCE FARM EXTENSION SERVICES IN

AFRICA 

INTRODUCTION This is one of a series of briefing papersto help USAID missions and their im-plementing partners in sub-Saharan Afri-ca use ICT more successfully to improvethe impact of their agriculture relateddevelopment projects including FTF(Feed the Future) projects. This paperfocuses on ICT applications that supportand enhance farm extension services.

Before turning to the potential role of ICT, it is useful to review some basicsabout extension services. No matterwhat the name of the system, approachor program (e.g., cooperative extension,advisory services, technical assistance orlinking research to practice), the functionremains the same: the transfer and ex-change of practical information for thefarmer to improve his/her outcomes.1 This transfer and exchange and link toagriculture research become what hasbeen termed an ‘engine for innovation’ in

agriculture and economic development. 2

Extension services help farmers decidewhat and when to plant, how to preparefor planting and best practices related togrowing, dealing with pests and disease,harvesting, and post harvest practicessuch as packing and storage.

1 We are using a narrower definition of farm extension services than is sometimeused. See for example, the broader defini-

tion used (relating to a wide variety of in-formation provided to farmers from infor-mation on agricultural process to marketprices and much more) in  Mobilizing thePotential of Rural and Agricultural Extension , 

by Ian Christopolos , FAO, Rome, 2010.2 Rivera, W.M. and V.R. Suliaman. “Exten-

sion: object of reform, engine for innova-tion,” Outlook on Agriculture. 38: 267-273(2009).

Extension services combine educationalmethodologies such as farmer fieldschools and demonstration plots as wellas advice from extension agents. Theyinclude the dual challenges of informingfarmers as well as keeping extensionagents themselves well trained withaccess to back up experts for toughproblems. They are delivered by publicand private entities via extension agents.National ministries of agriculture have

hundreds and sometimes thousands of extension agents, and large buyers oftenhave their own private agent networks.Still, farmers often go years without hav-ing direct contact with an extensionagent.

To increase access to these critical ser-vices, both public and private providershave been using a variety of delivery"channels," such as radio, print mediaand, increasingly, ICT-enabled channels,some of which are often combined. Mo-

bile phone networks are the ICT channelmost often used, given the recent dra-matic increase in access to such net-works, even in rural areas, and afforda-bility even for the poor.

This paper focuses particularly on ap-proaches to delivering farm extensionservices via these ICT channels in sus-tainable (i.e., without on-going donorsupport, although often with governmentsupport) and scalable ways (i.e., to reachtens of thousands or millions of farmers).

Often, more “high tech” ICT channelssuch as mobile phone services are com-bined with an older ICT channel, like ra-dio, that has been used well for many

years in sub-Saharan Africa and for dec-ades in the US and elsewhere.3

PROMISING EXAMPLES OFUSING ICT FOR FARM EX-

TENSION SERVICESThere are currently a wide variety of ap-proaches being tried to use cell phonenetworks to enhance extension services.Few have managed to scale to millions of

farmers and it is not clear yet (due tothe paucity of research and the relativelyshort time periods of the implementa-tions) which approaches have the mostimpact. Clearly, a variety of approaches(or combinations of approaches) mayprove successful. The approaches varyin several ways:

•  Whether text or voice is used and,for text, if searches or queries aremade via SMS or more advanced da-ta queries (which require a more

capable and expensive phone hand-set).

•  Whether video or digital photos orimages are used or other ICT toolsuch as GPS coordinates (pinpoint-ing geographic location of farmersor plots).

•  Whether farmers use the mobilephone services directly or via a me-diator such as a farm extensionworker.

•  Whether they enable one- or two-way communication. Using other

terms, whether farmers or interme-diaries "pull" information (i.e., in-itiate the query, or information is"pushed" to the farmer or interme-

 3 See for example, Sansoni, Silvia, “SiliconMali”, Forbes (2/4/2002) and Mbongo,Steve, “Found in translation: farm radiogoes local,” New Agriculturalist (July 2008)

8/8/2019 FACET Brief: ICT to Enhance Farm Extension Services in Africa

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ICT to Enhance Farm Extension Services in Africa Last updated November 2010

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This series of papers is supported by USAID’s Fostering Agriculture Competitiveness Employing Information Communica-tion Technologies (FACET) project under the Financial Integration, Economic Leveraging, Broad-Based Dissemination andSupport Leaders with Associates award (FIELD-Support LWA). This paper was written by Judy Payne of USAID, JoshWoodard of AED, and the IRIS Center at the University of Maryland. FACET offers on-demand field support to help mis-sions with the challenges of using these ICT interventions in agricultural development. To learn more about field support

options, contact Judy Payne, ICT Advisor, ( jpayne@usaid.gov).

COMMON CHALLENGESAll of these approaches to using ICT toenhance farm extension services facesome common challenges:

•  Converting the vast amounts of farm

extension information available in pa-

per form to digital and searchableform. For just one of many exam-ples, the many farmer field schoolmanuals available from USAIDfunded projects alone are richsources of information on recom-mended farming techniques andpractical solutions to problems forspecific crops. Extracting this in-formation and converting it to aform that is digitally searchable bycrop, then symptom or problemcategory is an enormous task. Many

ICT-enabled farm extension projectsare trying to tackle this formidablechallenge alone.

•  Reaching the right information fast .Even if all information is in digitaland searchable form, the inquirer(whether a farmer, extension work-er or call center agent) must be ableto search the information quicklyand receive a correct and useful an-swer. This means search techniquesmust be intuitive or well taught. If asearch results in an unhelpful (or no)

answer, the user must take moretime (and, often, pay more) to tryagain or give up in frustration.

•  Local languages. Farmers in sub-Saharan Africa speak dozens of lan-guages. The farm extension infor-mation provided to them must be ina language they understand—ortranslated by an intermediary.

•  Literacy . Many farmers in sub-Saharan Africa are illiterate or, if li-terate, may have trouble spellingcorrectly. ICT-enabled farm exten-

sion services may need to be deli-

vered via voice, an intermediary, orvia a system that accommodates ap-proximate spelling of key words.

•  Impact . There is little if any informa-tion on the impact of such ICT-enabled farm extension services.

Do they increase the effectivenessof farm extension services to in-crease farmers’ productivity and in-come? Are they worth their costgiven other alternatives? How bestcan they be combined with otherdelivery channels? How can they bedesigned to maximize impact? Atleast two studies underway (in2010) may offer some answers: oneof the Reuters Market Light servicein India and one of a SMS-based ser-vice to enhance a private farm ex-

tension agent network in sugar canein Kenya.

•  Who pays? Without sustainablebusiness models, ICT-enhanced farmextension services will not scale tomillions of farmers. How can gov-ernment and other resources becombined to offer effective ICT-enabled farm extension services? If,and if so, how, can private sponsorsbe used without reducing the trust-worthiness of the information pro-vided? How can cell phone service

providers be involved in “win-win”models of service delivery? Suchwin-win models include service pro-viders being able to gain customersor reduce their “churn” (the num-ber of customers jumping from net-work to network), while deliveringthe service to customers discountedrates.

•  Digitized Information. How can thechallenge of converting the vastamount of information to digitalform be tackled collectively?

RESOURCES

For good general information on exten-

sion services, see: 

http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/agric

ulture/extension_services.htm 

Christoplos, Ian, “Mobilizing the po-tential of rural and agricultural exten-sion”, (FAO, 2010)

Mucemi Gakuru, Kristen Winters &Francois Stepman, “Inventory of In-novative Farmer Advisory Servicesusing ICTs”, The Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (2009).

Rivera, W.M. and M. Kalim Qamar,“Agricultural Extension, Rural Devel-opment, and the Food Security Chal-

lenge,” (FAO, 2003)

Rikin Gandhi, et al, “Digital Green:Participatory Video and Mediated In-struction for Agricultural Extension,” Information Technologies and Interna-tional Development , Vol. 5, No. 1 (USCAnnenberg School for Communica-tion, Spring 2009)

Rivera, W.M. and V.R. Suliaman. “Ex-tension: object of reform, engine forinnovation,” Outlook on Agriculture. 38:267-273 (2009).

Rivera, W.M. and G. Alex. “The con-tinuing role of government in pluralis-tic extension systems,” Proceedings of the 20th Annual Conference of the

 AIAEE, Dublin, Ireland (2004). 

DISCLAIMER

The views expressed in this publi-cation do not necessarily reflectthe views of the U.S. Agency forInternational Development or the

U.S. Government.