Participatory ICT Design for Rural Development especially using Mobiles and Telephony

Hello members of e-agriculture.org, I am Dr. S.M. Haider Rizvi working with Communication and Computing Research Centre, Sheffield Hallam University, UK. We are working on Rural e-Services Project in India. Under this project a software known as 'KHETI' (meaning agriculture in Hindi) has been designed using Participatory ICT Design Methodologies and Agile and Extreme Programming. There is the major role of mobiles in enhancing the agriculture information flow system. The especially designing software (using python) helps the farmers and their representatives to make audio-visual short dialogue strips and share the same with the agriculture experts sitting remotely to get solutions to the agriculture problems. This technology also helps in accumulation and dissemination of knowledge within and outside the farmers groups. Interesting the the designing of technoloy has been very effective and appropriate but we are struggling in finding out a business model to sustain the technology. May be we could generate a discussion on this under this forum. Regards, Haider