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