Inventory of innovative farmer advisory services using ICTs

This paper documents all known innovative farmer advisory services or systems, currently in design, in existence or recently completed in Africa. The report notes that currently most farmers information is provided either by extension workers, through libraries or via websites. The authors assert that as the number of extension workers has been going down while that of farmers has been growing, there is a need for innovative information systems to address this gap. They argue that development of the National Farmers Information Service NAFIS a voice based service is one such initiative. Most other initiatives are web-based such as INFONET, the Organic Farmer publication. The authors argue that these e-agriculture tools encounter challenges because of illiteracy of some farmers and sparse internet infrastructure in Africa. Nevertheless, these are very useful resources and all that is needed is to provide an easy way for the farmers to navigate them. With the widespread use of mobile phones, voice and SMS solutions should find more use as they offer easy accessibility. However, they also face the following challenges: the SMS carries only a limited amount of information and requires a basic level of literacy. Voice based solutions are complicated to develop for they require machines to produce natural speech, or in technical terms, good speech synthesis. They also do not offer detailed information such as pictorial illustrations as in web solutions. Nonetheless, the voice solution is still by far the most promising platform for the farmer as it can be customised for language, is readily accessible and very natural, as it entails using the mobile phone for direct responses to specific questions. The authors recommend that: the agricultural sector requires a well organised learning community in the form of farmers associations, cooperatives, womens groups, etc. innovative farmer information systems should enhance the self directed learning among the rural community projects need to be more carefully documented, information on the projects needs to be more readily available and project evaluations need to be shared or projects will continue to be implemented in isolation from one another, often repeating the same mistakes that led to the collapse of similar initiatives. there will never be a one fit for all system. But the inventory suggests that systems which use a voice‐platform or audio files provide an innovative and promising entry point to farmer information many projects are still in the pilot phase and are, or have been of short duration, revealing the need to critically review upscaling scenarios and move from pilot to mainstream. effective methods of measuring and monitoring impacts of tools used by farmers need be developed.