ICT Revolutionarising Uganda’s
Agricultural Traditional Extension Services to M-extension Services
I am following up on the remarks
of two individuals; the state minister for Agriculture, Mr Vincent Sempijja who
in the June 26 edition of Daily Monitor
alleged that the country is lacking trained agriculture officers hampering
the sector’s development; and Mr. Moses Ariong who in the July 26 edition of
Daily Monitor was perplexed by the
Minister’s statement having laid off NAADs workers a year ago thus suggesting
ways to recruiting the jobless graduates to do the job, and more so to leave the
work of professionals to the professionals as a deliberate way to undertake
direct measures to redeem the agriculture sector depended upon by over 80% of
Ugandans; thus working towards the needed success of ‘Operation Wealth
Creation’.
As we highlight the issues surrounding the development and operation of
our Agricultural sector, we need to find solutions as the sector supports over
40% of our country’s GDP. Mr. Ariong solutions suggestion were more towards
human capital and I am suggesting solutions towards technology capital
development my expertise niche analysis area. The ICT uprise is increasingly
revolutionarising different sectors of the world such as health and education,
lessons which can be carried into Uganda’s agriculture sector. Perhaps the most
recognized transformations is due to the rapid embrace of the ICT mobile
innovations with increasing mobile phone subscribers forecasted to have reached
635 million by end of 2014 and 930million by 2019 in sub-Saharan Africa alone.
As such, throughout Africa these ICTs revolution have become progressively
integrated into information disseminated to farmers with “traditional” formal
ICTs such as radios and TVs becoming more prevalent in the advisory services to
feature agricultural information and most recently mobile learning.
Mobile learning is the use of any mobile or wireless device for
learning while on the move. The advancement of the mobile and wireless
communication technologies has enabled people to learn via their mobile devices
such as smartphones, mobile phones in order to obtain information and
educational content that aids their acquisition of knowledge, regardless of space
and time. Therefore, these technologies enable learners to become more
adaptable to flexible and contextual lifelong learning in order to gain the
knowledge and skills which they need to prosper throughout their lifetime.
The spread of mobile phones in rural and urban areas is important for changes
in the agricultural sector with generally improved agricultural market
performance. This is because as more rural farmers gain access to mobile phones
they are able to access the necessary timely information delivered as text,
video, picture, call, and audio information messages through mobile phones such
as on farm prices, diseases, climate, and agricultural production to help them
in their day today activities and decision making. Therefore, this may not only engaged the rural farmers in the technology
advancement adoption with continuous learning but it has also closed down the
gaps of information access between the urban and rural farmers especially on
the price markets for all beneficiaries. The access to such information and the
lifelong education and training engagement can help into the rollout of such
innovations to support and transform the extension sector training.
Current Technologies
Moodle vs Poodle for Virtual
Learning Management Systems
The e-learning or Virtual Learning environment is important today in
teaching, training, and learning many subjects. Moodle a freely provided open
source software is largely used as the Virtual Learning Management System to create
and run online courses for many educators. This can also be adapted for
agricultural online training courses for both extension workers and rural
farmers. However, without quality Internet, Moodle is still limited.
Consequently, Poodle can be taken advantage of to conduct various online
courses. Poodle (Portable Moodle) is a software tool designed for offline delivery
of course content. While Moodle courses are designed to offer an online environment
for learning with a focus on interaction and collaborative construction content
between teacher and learner, Poodle is the way to bring some of that content to
those who are in low-band width and non-bandwidth areas. Poodle courses can be
saved onto a USB/flash disk, as such learners no longer need a computer with
internet connection but only a computer for their learning. The benefit of
Poodle is that it maintains the same structure as Moodle thus helping to expand
the training/learning to offline learners in a format they are familiar with
after the face to face sessions at which time they can be given USBs loaded
with Poodle content. The advantage of this offline learning can greatly benefit
the farmers and extension workers who are largely based in the rural setting
with limited internet connectivity.
Farmer Computer Centers
Computers play one of the greatest role
the technology revolution as they provide the gateway technology access
to both farmers and field extension workers such as for the virtual learning,
internet information access yet the access to these computer services is limited
especially for the rural farmers. For long we have had telecentres now almost
phased out which have been majorly controlled by given administrators and
experts to be the pushers of information to the farming communities. If the
telecentre roles can be expanded to provide computer access and training for
the farmers or perhaps better still set up farmer computer training and working
centers, this can greatly benefit the farming community as they will have
control and access over what information they really need taking advantage of
the internet services when available. This would also support their virtual
learning via the USBs and CDs which would have uploaded refresher courses for
their learning without the necessities of internet. With the knowledge of
computers the farmers could greatly explore what they could use it with such as
farm designs, presentations, and documentation of their work. In addition, as
the availability and use of smart phones cheaply become more available to
farmers these centers would play a great role to train the farmers how they
could greatly benefit from the smart phone wide functions almost similar to
desktop computers, now termed as the new mobile mini computers.
Call Center
The proliferation of mobile technology particularly in developing
countries is providing new opportunities for delivering timely and relevant
agricultural information and advisory services along the agricultural value
chain to farmers. Thus, spatially agricultural call centers are emerging as major
channels for supporting large number of farmers across wider geographical
locations and with fewer technical resources. The call center can be used to
provide support and mentorship distance/virtual learning courses which is
greatly required. The Call center offers real-time advice on farming issues for
farmers and mentorship to field extensionists. NAADs has set up a call center
in 2013 as an initiative of working with Ministry of Agriculture, Animal
Industry and Fisheries. Agriculture experts from the call center provide
immediate and effective solutions to the problems of the farmers which help
them overcome their problems while the field extenisonists can be provided with
virtual effective mentorship by the experts which is parallel to emerging concerns
of the profession including current research, education and training. With the
increasing mobile phone acquisition among farmers across the country, calls can
be made to the center from any mobile operate free of charge. The use of this center
and more distribution of such centers across the country can give people great
access to information associated with their livelihood especially where
extensionists are lacking in some areas.
Voice/Audio Information
Delivery Services
The voice or audio information delivery services may include a diverse
menu of prerecorded agricultural content such as advice on farming methods,
market access, agribusiness, climate, and financial saving based on the
farmer’s day to day activities featuring a series of short segment audio
messages that are sent to farmers with phones to access relevant information
through an automated voice system. The
messages can be recorded to specified local dialects languages for various
community communication accesses. Apart from each farming community having a
different language, most farmers such as the Batwa people cannot read and write
due to the high level of illiteracy in various regions of the country. The
local dialects enables farmers to overcome one of these major challenges of
illiteracy levels for most district population.
Therefore, the prerecorded messages can be sent via their mobile phones
which would be received in form of a normal call. Farmers especially those who
cannot read and write can also record messages via their mobile phones and send
it back to the call center services for later expert feedback which would also
support the call center services where experts may not operate necessarily
24/7. The voice approach would not only help farmers access most of the
existing answers to agricultural needs but would also help over overcome the
problems of connectivity, literacy and languages which is beyond the reach of the vast majority
of farmers.
SMS Information Delivery
Services
This comprises of the development of short message service (SMS) based
information for diverse agricultural content which would be accessed via the
mobile phone. These messages comprised of 160 characters transformed into local
dialects specific to various districts to benefit all farming communities. The
developed messages would be sent to farmers via mobile phone as virtual extension
support. These services can also be extended to district officials, extension
workers, people who deal with agricultural and farmers concerns as a way to
engage them in continuous agricultural learning. The messages like the
voice/audio can be typed in various local languages including English for
mobile training via the mobile phones about the current agricultural research
information and innovative methods to stay in touch with the farmers changing
needs.
Future Technologies
Until Google Project Loon and Facebook’s drones can provide the entire world
with internet we will still be limited the in more real-time practical
innovative ways of providing expanded farmer services such as; the huge
availability of agricultural recorded videos taking advantage of YouTube while
the farmers could also record their videos for sharing with experts; picture
taking and sharing with experts; the social media networks which could link
farmers all over the world in a more relevant practical engagement as they
share their experiences, which could greatly benefit the rural unreachable
farmers found in the most vulnerable geographical locations. And perhaps with a
world entirely covered by internet it is beyond imagination what farmers could
do with the power of technology and knowledge in their hands…
Conclusion
Agricultural extension faces one of the greatest issues of an extension
to farmer ratio of 1:45000 in Uganda. Taking advantage of the technology
revolution and the increased use of mobile learning, now extension services of current
research, support, and training can be delivered to the last farmer on ground
into what we can term as now as Mobile extension or M-extension services. M-extension
could perhaps be the great solver of the extension to farmer ratio issue thus
pushing it the direct opposite direction positively.
Nandozi Carolyn S.
ICT and Climate Expert
Makerere University-Agricultural
Innovations Systems Brokerage Association (AGINSBA)
Global Health Corps