Question 1: ICTs for collecting agricultural, socio-economic, or M&E data (Open 11 June)

Question 1: Collecting data the conventional way (through paper and pen) is time-consuming, costly, and difficult to manage. However, digitization and increases in connectivity have created opportunities to improve these processes.

What types of ICT applications or devices are available for collecting agricultural, socio-economic, or M&E data in remote locations? How can you use them?

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Submitted by Goretti Amuriat on Fri, 06/15/2012 - 11:15

The most pupular tool that is currently being used to collect data in rural areas is a mobile phone. With the increase in penetration of mobile phones in the rural areas, the mobile phone has become a household tool that can be used to send and receive messages.

Also anumber of mobile applications have been developed that enable collection of data on amobile phone.

It can also be use to capture videos, pictures, and also send this information to the users. other ICTs that can be used are digital cameras and recorders.

Though the main limitation to the effective use of these tools is the availabilty of electricity in rural areas.

Submitted by Rabiu Auwalu Yakasai on Fri, 06/15/2012 - 13:38

It is true everthing you said zgamuriat about electricity and mobile phone in rural areas. But if we expand the issue to improving livelihoods, it is a booming business of operating portable electric generetor just for recharging mobile phones in rural areas. So coming to grips with reality, the issue of electricty is not that much of a hinderance for operating rural mobile phones at least in isolated cases.

This means we can still come back to the critical issues of operation, data type, accuracy, relevance to the source, mode of presenting the data to final destination of analysis. Validity of the data captured tells alot about the data capturer. For example, how does an illiterate capture pest destruction in a local rice field that is reaching threshold level very fast. Think of validity of the data for correct analysis, the transfer and feedback remedy.

Submitted by Sean Paavo Krepp on Fri, 06/15/2012 - 17:34

Rabiu,

You make a strong point. We are training our Community Knowlege Workers on how to set up an offgrid charging mirco-enterprise. We find that not only do they earn revenue but they also save household costs on carosene or parafin and the health benefits of solar are much greater.

Some of our CKWs earn as much as 100,000 UGX (40 USD) per month in charing phones and small appliances. With 60% of our CKWs earning under 1.25 USD per day the charging business can double their household income.

Best regards,

Sean

Submitted by Rabiu Auwalu Yakasai on Sat, 06/16/2012 - 17:06

Perfect Sean, we hit it in this forum. Thanks to e-agriculture. As Senior Special Assistant Agriculture (SSAA) in Kano state, I am interested to present comprehensive proposal on the Off Grid Charging Micro-Enterprise to Kano State Governor for applying in the state. Kindly send me more details regarding the training, where and how many participants and cost implication that covers the required technology to be owned by the trainees.

To us, the added advantage of cutting kerosene for household cooking and health benefits are enormous. Clearly I can imagine significance of the technology bordering on positive challenge to climate change; checking desert enchrochment, positive poverty reduction and most importatnt improving connectivity for contactivity of the hitherto 'closed' rural communities.

Let's establish contact line on this please Sean

Thank you

Submitted by Sean Paavo Krepp on Sat, 06/16/2012 - 20:05

Hello Rabiu, I have been to Kano to visit the agricultural university and model farms back when I was setting up Nokia Life Tools in Nigeria. Let's discuss offline how we can help you get started. My email is [email protected]. All the best, Sean

Submitted by Rabiu Auwalu Yakasai on Sun, 06/17/2012 - 10:45

Hi Sean, it is wonderful hearing that you have been to Kano for similar engagement before. I have choosen a farm site (about 300 acres) some 1 hour drive southwards Kano for developing 'ICT in agriculture' concepts that have worked elsewhere, for Kano smallholder farmers. It is a ranch farm in the making and we hope to start from cattle fattening (3months) to slaughtering, refridgerating and distribution/retailing in Kano and beyond. The underpining drive is to train local farmers on market-led farm productions principally fresh vegetables, red meat, organic agriculture and e-farming. The farm location is closest to highest irrigation area in the country (Kano River irrigation Project -KRIP), a surface irrigation covering 22,000 hectares commissioned since in the seventies and still going strong but requires some modern transformation. The farmers in this area are as 'closed' to global ICT trend as a dead reciever. In fact, kindly prepare to include the ranch in your model farms project. Will stop here for continuation through the email you send to me. Much appreciation and till you hear from me via your email again.

Thank you Sean

Submitted by Sze Wong on Sat, 06/16/2012 - 21:29

Sane and Rabiu,

You bring out a fancinating topic. We at iFormBuilder are now deploying mobile servers, we call ThunderPlug, to the field. These servers are as small as a nomarl external harddrive and can connect locally to smart phones or iPodTouches. So now not only can we collect data offline, we can also share, update, report and analysis completely offline. The only requirement is electricity, which makes the off grid charging concept a fancinating idea. It turns a challenge into an oppoprtunity!

So how much power do these portable generate produce? How hard is it for a local household to set it up?

Thanks.

Sze

Submitted by Rabiu Auwalu Yakasai on Sun, 06/17/2012 - 11:10

Dear Szawong,

Looks like the puzzle is gradually fitting itself for us here before laid on the ground. As you would probably see my latest response to Sean we approached off-forum interaction towards developing opportunities into business. What I would suggest is you also send me your email address so that I can forward more information regarding my local engagements and plans for e-farming development for smallholder farmers here in Kano Nigeria. I like the iFormBuilder idea for quick communication by local farmers to e-agriculture community.

Capacity of portable generators - different range to serve different demand and applications. But from 700w to ----? It is usually a buy, add fuel and engine oil and start affair. Tailors, mobile phone chargers, computer centres, and even residential houses use them extensively. Simply operated by remotest rural people. Different brands, Honda, Kubota, Tiger, Suzuki, I am sure are familiar technologies with you.

Submitted by Arjen Swank on Mon, 06/18/2012 - 14:46

Hi zgamuriat,

Over the years we have gained extensive experience with collecting data with mobile phones. As we have identified that charging the phones was a problem, we started to give out solar chargers as incentives for participating in our SMS-based quizzes. The chargers can be used to charge phones in little time. We distributed the chargers through local, regional and district offices of the partner that we worked with. Besides the advantage of being able to participate with their mobiles, the respondents sometimes figured out some kind of business model where they would charge other's mobiles for little money. Great to see this kind of entrepreneurship.

Rgds, Arjen

Submitted by Antoine Kantiza on Sat, 06/16/2012 - 22:38

I agree that iPod or iPad are the cheapest tools to be used in the collection of data instead of using pens and papers nevertheless the cost of those tools remains too high for the common small farmer of developing countries who have a hard journey and have no time to learn how to input features in EpiSurveyor; iFormBulder which involve to purchase the costly iPhone or into FrontlineSMS even if this software should be available for all mobile phone . I think that even if the robust data collection is useful to researchers or to the headquarter of providers of the project for monitoring the actions taken in order to boost agriculture and livestock, when the opportunities is given to the beneficiaries in ending the project to choose between to be granted iPhone or to get the equivalent of one iPad or iPod for each small farmer of Burundi, I am sure that this one should select to acquire the equivalent, i-e the almost three hundred of thousands in Burundi Francs which should be used to buy the selected seeds, fertilizers and medicines against tropical diseases known due of report of agronomics or veterinaries disseminated throughout the country instead of buying that iPhone with immediate effects of reducing hunger and poverty in the country, however, such project does not exist in Burundi where the radio media is listen more and more through mobile phones and it is worth mentioning that web or mobile based data collection is unexploited even in the urban area. Also, I try to understand furthermore the question of Pablo Ruiz and I find it very relevant, so I wonder why the project framing the data collection have to be closed and the workers of the project have to leave, it means that the goal has been reached and so anyone should ask if the fundamental goal is to build a big database of agriculture concerns or to boost directly the agriculture and livestock in the rural area framed by the project and who could go on as supervisor in maintaining the database in case it is dropped? By the way, the exploitation of big data collection is reserved for well educated persons, consequently, even if it could be possible to beneficiaries to collect and to send data through mobile phone, the difficult is manifest for small farmers of developing countries to exploit and to interpret the big data collected through mobile phones and I am delighted to listen that the appropriation of monitoring and evaluation of the collected data has succeeded in East Africa among farmers framed by CAHNET project as ensured by Laura Whudson and I have no reason to doubt the relevance of the report and if so, it should be better to extend this kind of project in other areas of rural community. Prof Antoine KANTIZA, Master Uticef,-

Submitted by Laura Walker Hudson on Mon, 06/18/2012 - 15:34

Hello Kantiza,

I think you raise an excellent point that many of the higher-cost or more complex data collection tools available are targeted more at researchers and professionals than at smallholder farmers or stakeholders themselves. One of our motivations at FrontlineSMS is to enable as many people as possible to use technology to 'have a say', for as low a cost in money and complexity as possble. The examples that Amy mentioned earlier in this forum, on radio programs that give farming advice to any farmer that sends an SMS with a problem or question, may not be the kind of structured data collection that researchers need to be able to chart or analyze statistically, but, as Amy's example about diagnosing Newcastle Disease in chickens shows, it can still have real results for communities.

Submitted by Antoine Kantiza on Thu, 06/21/2012 - 13:04

I have been pleased to hear Laura Walker Hudson saying that FrontlineSMS is providing an opportunity to the deep rural community ‘to have a say’ in order to share experiences instead of creating and building another new database for experts and further staffs preoccupied by plausible future purpose. I think that FronlineSMS is winning the first challenge of its easy exploitation by the common possessor of mobile phone and it is a wonderful result in honor of the creator of the software; the second step is to know if the software works really despite the problem of downloading as quoted by Rabiu and the third step is to monitor if that opportunity has been taken by the beneficiaries, I wonder if the great number of farmers should be aware of this tool of communication and I guess that another tool of communication like radio should be used to stimulate and train farmers in using FrontlineSMS. I have read the post of Amy O Donnell entitled ‘Mobile in Hybrid with other communication tools’ and first of all, I appreciated the word “hybrid”, it is obvious that the progress of creativity has been achieved in many fields when two or more gears have been allied and I add also that ‘a context is king’ to mean that the radio has succeeded in many areas of Africa like Burundi country or in any other part of world where there is predominance of oral tradition and I expect that in the complement of the radio program which could be missed by listeners, the mobile phone should improve the transmission of fair and useful written messages between African farmers and I wish for Barzaradio to go ahead as I am among its supporters because I was participant in Farm Radio International Network when the idea of creating Barzaradio was launched. Prof Antoine KANTIZA, Master Uticef,- E-mail: [email protected] or [email protected]

Submitted by Laura Walker Hudson on Mon, 06/18/2012 - 18:30

Sorry about the double posting.

Submitted by Moses Owiny on Mon, 06/18/2012 - 10:17

Apart from the text Messaging Systems which may be a little bit less costly and appropriate for rural communities for data collection,what other cheaper tools are their for organisations wanting to capture data from the field in rural communities. I have seen many posts about the Ipods, Iphones and ODK systems etc, how cheap and relevant are these tools and what kind of data do they capture anyway?.

I still have not adequately understood what appropriate tools are used to capture data in remote locations,how and what kind of data. Somebody should help me reply to this post.

Moses

Women of Uganda Network

Submitted by Kiringai Kamau on Tue, 06/19/2012 - 10:00

We are not so WiFi ourselves but are bluetooth! My name is Kiringai Kamau from Kenya. I promote the integration of ICTs to agriculture in Eastern Africa. I have been working mainly in the tea and dairy sectors to capture data in the field using rechargeable batteries into digital weighing scales that we have been developing and upgrading through a collaboration with an India based company, Applied Data Logix. Our technologies are available at www.octagon.co.ke and we create value chain linked efforts through community aggregation centres that are based in farmer organized produce centres. I had to go back to school and change my area of focus from ICT to agriculture, with a focus on agricultural extension through formation of collectives. The data is captured using digital scales that are initially fed with farmer records at the farmer collective's computer. Farmer records only contain names and their numbers, nothing on produce data. When the collection process starts the scale weighs the produce, the weigh it captured and stored on the scale, display of the weighment is displayed on a remote display, a receipt is printed for farmer record---which is not necessary but is needed to create confidence, the scale is delivered to the office to download the data, which could be relayed to the collective action's computers/servers on GPRS/GSM, but due to infrastructure constraints in WiMax communication we provide for the duo benefit of using the data download from the scale. The data is aggregated per month and payment done in like manner. It creates confidence, promotes creation of collectives and investment among smallholder farmers. We have seen farmers who never had an income earn as much as $200 a month and the direct employment generation at the particularly collective now stands at 600 with an MBA as a manager of the collective. We now promote the use of the technology in all sectors and are now taking its operations to any field data capture work. Our software to manage the data from the scales has now evolved to become an ERP (almost)... The foregoing can be used in any M&E set-up and can be integrated into any cloud solution, not necessarily onto our own emerging ERP. We are not spending more time creating farmer organization and training programmes on the same as you can see at http://rural-agriculture.wikispaces.com Join us and create an Aquaculture, Value Addition, Agribusiness and Knowledge (AVAAK) Centre for which we are busy building a community of practise around what people are doing. You are invited to be part of our growing network... On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 3:00 PM, wrote: > ** > > Write above this line to reply|Escriba sobre esta línea para > responder|Pour répondre écrivez au-dessus de cette ligne > Dear | Estimado(a) | Cher/Chère: kiringai > > > • New comment *|* Nuevo comentario *|* Nouveau commentaire: *Cost > effectivenessof these Data Collections Systems_WOUGNET* > > • Published on *| *Publicado el *|* Publié le: *18/06/2012 - 10:17* > > • *mowiny *wrote *| *escribió *|* a écrit: > > * * > > *Apart from the text Messaging Systems which may be a little bit less > costly and appropriate for rural communities for data collection,what other > cheaper tools are their for organisations wanting to capture data from the > field in rural communities. I have seen many posts about the Ipods, Iphones > and ODK systems etc, how cheap and relevant are these tools and what kind > of data do they capture anyway?.* > * > > I still have not adequately understood what appropriate tools are used to > capture data in remote locations,how and what kind of data. Somebody should > help me reply to this post. > > Moses > > Women of Uganda Network > > * > > • Read more *|* Leer más *| *Lire la suite: > http://www.e-agriculture.org/forumtopics/question-1-icts-collecting-agri... > > > > > -- > > • To manage your subscriptions log in: > http://www.e-agriculture.org/en/user/login and then click on > 'Notifications': http://www.e-agriculture.org/user/15731/notifications > > • Para manejar sus suscribciones, ingrese con su nombre de usuario: > http://www.e-agriculture.org/es/user/login y haga click en > "Notificaciones": http://www.e-agriculture.org/user/15731/notifications > > • Pour gérer vos abonnements, entrez votre nom d'utilisateur: > http://www.e-agriculture.org/fr/user/login et cliquez sur > «Notifications»: http://www.e-agriculture.org/user/15731/notifications > > > > View original post: > http://www.e-agriculture.org/mailcomment/redirect/%3C15731.36727.4206.13... > -- _____________________________________________________________________ Kiringai Kamau VACID Africa Institute - A Cisco Entrepreneur Institute Training Center Institute Programme Manager, Knowledge Specialist & Value Chain Analyst PO Box 35046 00200 Nairobi-Kenya Tel: +25420-2719733/2728708 Fax: +25420-2724389 Cell: +254-722800986/733375505 Websites:www.vacidafrica.or.ke,www.kenyaagriculture.or.ke, www.kenyagateway.or.ke

Submitted by Kiringai Kamau on Mon, 05/20/2013 - 19:13

Submitted by Antoine Kantiza on Thu, 06/21/2012 - 12:57

I have been pleased to hear Laura Walker Hudson saying that FrontlineSMS is providing an opportunity to the deep rural community ‘to have a say’ in order to share experiences instead of creating and building another new database for experts and further staffs preoccupied by plausible future purpose. I think that FronlineSMS is winning the first challenge of its easy exploitation by the common possessor of mobile phone and it is a wonderful result in honor of the creator of the software; the second step is to know if the software works really despite the problem of downloading as quoted by Rabiu and the third step is to monitor if that opportunity has been taken by the beneficiaries, I wonder if the great number of farmers should be aware of this tool of communication and I guess that another tool of communication like radio should be used to stimulate and train farmers in using FrontlineSMS. I have read the post of Amy O Donnell entitled ‘ Mobile in Hybrid with other communication tools’ and first of all, I appreciated the word “hybrid”, it is obvious that the progress of creativity has been achieved in many fields when two or more gears have been allied and I add also that ‘a context is king’ to mean that the radio has succeeded in many areas of Africa like Burundi country or in any other part of world where there is predominance of oral tradition and I expect that in the complement of the radio program which could be missed by listeners, the mobile phone should improve the transmission of fair and useful written messages between African farmers and I wish for Barzaradio to go ahead as I am among its supporters because I was participant in Farm Radio International Network when the idea of creating Barzaradio was launched. Prof Antoine KANTIZA, Master Uticef,- E-mail: [email protected] or [email protected]

Submitted by Antoine Kantiza on Fri, 06/22/2012 - 22:33

I think that I could add some quantitative details in my latest post but it takes long to collect; to analyse and to validate quantitative data before publishing it. In fact, such quantitative data could be collected in Burundi or any other developing country with the support of projects focused on the collection, treatment and validation of quantitative data of rural community and agriculture matters. I thank for Ehud Gelb for his link which shows the involvement of ICT in the agriculture issues I remember to have posted a comment “ ICT not to waste time but for taking right decisions” below the insight posted by Ehud Gelb in the question entitled :”What is the most effective way to measure the impact of ICT for development (ICT 4D) initiatives” which is still available in the forum mentioned by the link http://www.e-agriculture.org/forums/forum-archive/forum-challenges-and-opportunities-capturing-impact-ict-initiatives-agriculture I look forward to share further knowhow in ICT for development. Prof Antoine KANTIZA, Master UTICEF,- E-mail :[email protected] or [email protected]

Submitted by Victor Miclovich on Mon, 06/25/2012 - 09:26

I'm probably quite late in this discussion. As a developer and manager, I have a few concerns and really thought we can discuss this further:

I love the work being done on the mHealth front, need to know:

How we can get some of the goodies being built up on mHealth into Agriculture).
What are the challenges being faced?
How can developers combine forces to harness opportunities that can be brought into agriculture?

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Forum: "ICT for Data Collection, Monitoring and Evaluation" June, 2012

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