Innovative Farmer Advisory Services using ICT

Over the past 10 years, there has been a remarkable progress in the use of ICT in African agriculture, especially in the area of farmers' access to market information. Various projects have been developed that integrate ICTs into the dissemination of agricultural information to farmers. Farmers Information Services at the national and regional level are a promising new field of research and application in the emerging field of e-agriculture. This paper discusses several innovative projects using ICTs to deliver information to farmers, focussing its analysis largely on mobile telephony, which has become more widespread recently as a means of disseminating agricultural information to farmers and offers various means of providing agricultural information in areas where internet infrastructure is limited and unreliable. It draws its findings from The Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA)'s Inventory of Innovative Farmer Advisory Services using ICT, that was compiled of all known innovative farmer advisory services or systems currently in design, in existence or recently completed in Africa. The inventory (66 pages) is the result of an online consultation with the FARA Regional Agricultural Information & Learning System (RAILS) discussion group held during October 2008 and desk study. While not a lot of information was available for some of the projects found, the inventory reveals that many projects are of a pilot nature, implemented by international organizations, have been of short duration and often have not remained after the original donor funding has ceased. This has exposed the need to upscale projects, taking into account the individual context and information needs of farmers and thereby developing services with carefully integrated platforms, with the support not only of private companies and NGOs but investment from national governments as well.