The exponential diffusion of mobile communication across Uganda, and much of the developing world at large, has led mobile to become a testing ground for various ICT agriculture services delivered. Unfortunately, the majority of these early services usually require farmers to follow a strict syntax in order to register and the information is most often provided exclusively in English. Not surprisingly, a majority of the farmers are not sufficiently literate in English to benefit from these services, which dramatically undermines the effectiveness of these services. Against that background, we developed and field tested a mobile-based platform that enables farmers to use their basic mobile phones and to interact with their respective extension agents in their own local languages.
We believe this simple approach has major implications for policy and practice across the developing world. For more information about our study, you can find my paper on SSRN at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2518170.
Ninsiima Daniel
Quello Center, MSU
