Assessing the Role of Information and
Communication Technologies to Enhance
Food Systems in Developing Countries:
A Focus on Eastern and Southern Africa
Charles Steinfield
Michigan State University
What is the GCFSI
• One of 7 “development labs” funded by USAID
through the Higher Education Solutions Network
– Goal of HESN – foster new approaches to
development problems that
• Involve the whole of the university, not just traditional
development disciplines
• Involve students to encourage more to work on
development issues
– Student internships, innovation grants – open to any students, not
just from our university
– http://gcfsi.msu.edu
GCFSI core areas
• Understanding food system challenges arising from three
interrelated sets of trends
– Climate change, coupled with population growth, causing increased
pressure on land
– Urbanization and rising incomes, and resulting changes in food
distribution and consumption patterns
– Skill gaps in the foods that need to be addressed to meet these
challenges
• Our role – examine where and how ICTs can help
Overview
• ICT access gaps
• Applications of ICTs to support small-scale
farmers – ICT4Ag
• Research examining outcomes
• Highlights from our field work
Access to ICTs
•
Many publicly available
data sources
– ITU ICT Indicators
Database
– GSMA Intelligence
•
Freely available data sites:
– http://www.itu.int/net4/itud/icteye/
– http://data.worldbank.org
•
GSMA Intelligence “Dashboards”
Foundational issue: access to electricity –
especially in SSA
Global Growth in ICT Use
Wide variability in developing regions
Growth in household access to computers
But less than 10% of households in Africa have
computers (note: exclusive of Arab States)
Strong growth in Internet access
Again – limited household Internet access
in African countries
Outlook for mobile looks better
Even in Africa – estimates of 2 of every 3
people with mobile subscription
But note serious estimation problems due to
• purchase of multiple SIM cards, including by many who don’t have a phone
• Significant amount of sharing/borrowing phones
• Use of population figures as base – includes very young, very old
Developing world falling behind in
broadband Internet via fixed lines
Situation even worse when considering quality of broadband access:
developing world – lower speeds, higher costs as % of monthly income
(1.7% vs. 30.1 %)
Very low broadband penetration in Africa
Active Mobile Broadband
Active: 256K or better, and used to download data via IP in past 3 months
Despite growth in mobiles, Africa lagging
in active mobile broadband
Infrastructure Summary
• Multiple strategies required – with radio and TV
channels a part of the mix
• Home access to Internet still too limited –
reliance on shared community approach still
needed (e.g. tele-centers, village kiosks)
• Simple mobiles – voice and text – still offer the
best option to reach individuals at BOP
– Smartphones coming, but still low in places like SSA
– And, as shown later, simply having a phone not
enough
Applications of ICT4D in many domains
•
•
•
•
Health
Education
Fostering micro-enterprises
Agriculture
– Especially critical given the predominance of farming
as the primary occupation among the world’s rural
poor
– 70% of world food needs supplied by “smallholder”
farmers (typically 2 acres or less)
ICT applications for small-scale farmers start
with an understanding of information needs
Figure From Mittal,Gandhi, and Tripathi, 2010
Examples of ICT4Ag
• Traditional media – TV and radio remain important – should
not focus only on computers, mobiles, and Internet
– Farm Radio International, Farmer Voice Radio
– Shamba Shape Up
– Rukaa Juu from Femina
– Digital Green
• Essential features
– Participatory, local involvement
– Integrated with other
media – e.g. SMS, social media,
local viewing strategies
– “edu-tainment”
– Need a strategy for local village TV viewing as rural access to TV low
Rural TV Access Challenge
Proliferation of Mobile Services
Type of System
Basic Focus
Farmer advisory
and information
services
Providing ag info directly to
farmers, two-way interaction with
ag extension officers
Market
information
systems
Address information asymmetries
that disadvantage small farmers,
provide real time market prices
Financial
information
services
Platforms that allow use of
mobiles to store, send and receive
money. Also micro-lending, microinsurance services
Decision support Typically involve collection of
services
some information from farmers
that drives algorithm-based
recommendations, precision ag
Examples
ICTs, intermediaries, and collective action
• Can equip an intermediary with more advanced
tools, data, to provide locally relevant advice
– E.g. Grameen Foundation’s Community Knowledge
Workers
• Crowdsourcing via mobile devices for early
warnings of outbreaks, other types of
crowdsourced data
– E.g. Digital Early Warning Network of the Great Lakes
Cassava Initiative
Limited Research on ICT4Ag Outcomes
• ICT is a means to an end, not the goal itself
• Evidence of impact is mixed – e.g. studies of market
information and mobiles
– Lower price dispersion across markets after mobile phones
• But through personal calling, not a market information service
– Fafchamps and Minton study of RML – subscribers didn’t receive
–
–
–
–
higher prices than non-subscribers
Many ways that price information circulates, don’t need MIS
Subscription doesn’t always mean use – adoption rates low
Aker studies: Benefits are highly nuanced – vary by type of crop,
quality of roads, distance to market, competitiveness of markets
Burrell and Oreglia – market prices taken out of context, not the
same as having actual ability to sell at a particular market at a
particular price
Gender and ICTs
• Women’s access to all types of ICTs is lower
– Less likely to listen to radio each week or view TV in
demographic surveys
– Globally, 16% fewer women access the Internet than men
– GSMA reported that women were 21% less likely to have a
mobile phone than men in 2010 (26% for women at the
“bottom of the pyramid” in terms of income
• But evidence that mobiles benefit women – Aker studies:
where women have mobiles, more crop diversity, more
likely to grow a cash crop
• Evidence of different usage patterns – used to strengthen
local relationships, not expand network
Brief overview of our field work
• Assessing rural farmers use of a mobile market
information system – M-Farm, in Kenya
– Service has received a lot of attention and awards,
but little systematic evaluation of impact
• 76 Farmers (44 men; 32
women)
• 9 group interviews
• To avoid male dominance
during group interviews,
we talked to men and
women separately when
possible.
Findings
•
•
•
•
•
•
A “social item”
Red and green button use/ unfamiliarity with SMS
Phone charging and costs
Little pre-paid credit
Many phones in poor condition
No awareness of M-Farm
• difficulties using M-Farm after being exposed to it
• literacy, language
You asked something about
mobile phones, we use them,
I myself I use it. In the first
case we were using them as a
social item, maybe to pass
this message to a friend,
maybe to get some
information from a family
member.
“Red and Green Button Use”
Next Steps
• Strategies to improve smallholder farmer mobile phone
competence
• Use Digital Green participatory video approach, focus on mobiles
for agriculture
• Work with Shamba Shape Up to incorporate mobile phones into
their program
• Combine the two approaches to bring Shamba Shape Up
episodes to rural villages