Forum: "Mobile Information Services" November, 2011
Question 2: What are the barriers to reaching scale with mobile agriculture information services and...
18/11/2011
Question 2: What are the barriers to reaching scale with mobile agriculture information services and how can partnering with a mobile network operator reduce these?
Launching the discussion on the second question.
My experience with market information system as well as with helpline services is that the scalability comes from the architecture of the service far more than a relationship with mnos.
Let me take 2 examples:
*services relying on intermediaries
the model on intermediary-based service is very popular, particularly in market information system, mostly because of the technology: sms is not usable by most of the farmers living in the developing world (if you are interested by number see e.g. a post i wrote few weeks ago: http://www.webfoundation.org/2011/10/review-of-the-new-vodafoneoxfamaccenture-report-on-mobile-for-agriculture/ ) and today the vast majority of such systems are sms-based. So the implementation requires the use of literate, sms-aware intermediaries. So then, one need to idenitfy potential intermediaries, train them, pay them as part of the model. This is a problem from a sustainability perspective, but also a problem from a scalability perspective: finding and training intermediaries at a country wide level. This is working perfectly at a local level, but I'm not aware of any of these systems that have succeeded to scale up.
In my opinion, the only option is to work towards removing the need for intermediaries in such system, and this is more a technology problem, at this point in time, rather then anything else.
*helpline service
Second example of service: helpline. here, no intermediaries for farmers (thus the success of such services on the user side), but on the service provider side, the human-handling process is killing the service. A knowledge worker is able to manage up to 70 requests a day, that pays as one can imagine a very small part of their salary. So here again, the problem is in the architecture of the service. Such helpline can only be sustainable and therefore scalable if knowledge workers are replaced by technology (see also the same post i mentioned above)
So as i pointed in another post in question 1, i believe that partnership with mnos is not a magic wand that would make a non-sustainable non-scalable service becomes very profitable.
steph
I am curious about Stephane's comment that SMS is not usable by most farmers in the developing world. Certainly illiteracy is a challenge but I understood that even illiterate farmers found using SMS for market price information acceptable. Or they were able to find a literate relative or friend to help them. One solution is indeed intermediation as Grameen CKW does. And the CKW model is working to hone a business model to make it sustainable and scalable (a key element of this is to use the CKW's -- community knowledge workers -- to collect information on behalf of paying clients).
Certainly voice based services are more convenient and more and more services are finding a need to add this option but keeping call center costs low enough to be sustainable and scalable is a significant challenge. Has this been done anywhere in Africa? Or are the Indian examples (perhaps IKSL) transferrable?
Judy
SMS in rural areas. I think this is one of the biggest discrepancy i see between our field work and the belief in the community.
I also heard all over the place that sms is not a barrier. but in practice it is a major barrier. We couldn't find one farmer in Mali and Burkina who has ever recei or send an SMS. Illiteracy is not the only problem. I'm just returned 2 days ago again from Mal where i i've talked to representatives of farmer groups who are perfectly literate but are not able to use SMS. Illiteracy is one of the 3 factors with language and interface that explains that.
It seems that there is a growing set of publications that starts to reflect what we are observing in our projects in India and west africa that shows that SMS is not a channel of information for farmers (see again the sources in my post). This is true for agriculture information, but this is also true for e.g. financial service like m-pesa in Kenya. Sometimes relatives, or kids are able to read sms, but this is not a reliable option.
Now about voice-based services, this is where the major opportunity is for the future. Definetly, any human-based call center setup is not a sustainable scalable option. The only way to go is through automatic IVR system. There is a need for further research in that domain, and this is exactly what we are currently doing, but all the data show that if we can empower farmers directly to search and find information they need or feed the system with information they have (e.g. production, quantity, price etc) through voice technology, then this would solve current issues. IVR systems has been tested in the past but with a more traditional western approach of IVR system that are designed for people living in a technology-aware environment. Such approaches have miserably failed for people such as farmers. There is now a new movement and a new community developing new innovative approaches in that area which looks very promising. See for instance the report of the workshop we organized in Tanzania last june of voice-based services.
In terms of examples, we are experiencing in different porject in India and Africa such approach, but this is still in development. See e.g. VBAT (Voice Browsing Acceptance and Trust) or W4RA (Web Alliance for REgreening in Africa) or VOICES (VOIce-based Community-cEntric mobile Services for social development)
I would like to say that in any initiative, new challenges usually emerge and requires that they are adressed as they come.For the case of M-pesa in kenya,people who are illeterat e still use the service of sending and receiving money.When they receive money ,the senders usually call them to inform them that they have send a given amount to them. They then look for mobile operation agent whom they trust would not cheat them.In the case of farmers.Services given to farmers can be having accounts to accomodate the unbanked population as well as making transations easier as they can make order of inputs using the mobile service
To pick up on Steph's comment, I agree that data-rich content on feature phones as well as voice-based services are more promising for achieving impact than SMS. The question I have is how economically sustainable voice-based services are in this market. IVR and call centers are clearly the most costly information delivery mechanisms. We also know that farmers' willingness to pay for agronomic information tends to be low. What indications do we have that willingness-to-pay will increase to the point of equilibrium with the cost of these services? Or do we think that the costs of voice-based services needs to be covered in some other way?
Hillary
Yes, farmers' willingness to pay for agronomic information may be low because of the risk involve in investing in farm activities by rural farmers, and also the decades of free services from national extension services. But to be optimistic, the trend is likely to change in the next few years where a business-oriented farmer takes up insurance for his/her farm and therefore be more willing to pay for such services. Also farmer cooperatives that I talked about in my earlier post!
I think we also need to explore some models such as volunteers providing agricultural information or the use of national service or youth service in some parts of Africa to smoothly transition into a more sustainable economic models. Africa especially has rich resource of youth who are skilled in ICTs and also in agriculture. Preparing them through college education into the national service or youth service could be an asset for sustainability. This will be a longterm investment though i.e. through their educational programs to have some background in development or rural sociology in order to handle the task.
These approaches may be used to cover the costs associated with voice-based services that Hilary is anticipating, in the short term.
Ben
Hillary's post has a couple of very important points:
*IVR cost
*willingness to pay at the farmer level
On the IVR cost side, I think that people are mixing two parts that are unrelated. From the service provider perspective, it is very cheap to setup a (low-scale) voice-based service platform. Operating the platform is also very cheap in the sense that content and actions on the platform by the service provider is usually done over a traditionnal web browser link. IVR technolog is not costly at all, at the same level as other technology i would say. That said, what is very costly in most setup that are deployed today is the human-handling of the calls, either in a synchronous (call center, a human answer a human) or asynchronous (the caller drops a message than is then manager by a human) mode. This is the major bottleneck today, that the technology could easily fix in a very near future.
On the willingness to pay, this is a key factor, related to the previous paragraph. An ivr platform is very cheap to operate if airtime is paid by the caller (the farmer) or is free.
Let me start with the 'free' option. It is not a joke, it is a trend that we are seeing all over the world where intra-network call are getting close to free or are free. In lots of developed countries, fixed and mobile airtime is now free. e.g. All operators are offering through their fixed-line combo free call to all mobile and fixed phones in france. This trend is expanding in developing countries too. In India, reliance at least is offering free call within its network. In tanzania, one operator (can't remember its name now) is now offering vouchers that allow unlimited call in the network for a given duration (1h up to 24h) at very low cost. I'm convinved that this trend will expand.
Now specifically on the willingness-to-pay. I've to say that this was also a big discovery for me, as i thought this would be a major problem. I've to say that i was very surprised in our operation in Sahel (Mali, Burkina) and India (UP) to find out that this was not a barrier at all. People are very pragmatic, and while it takes time to integrate a new service, then when people trust it, they have no problem making the relation between price and value. For instance, in rural areas, most of farmers have absolutely no way to get any support outside their circle. The only source of information is the radio. Therefore, the airtime is not the problem if this is to save (some of) their production. For me, the eye-opener was the use of airtime for entertainment: all community radios have broadcast that allow people to call in to vote for songs, or say a message, and those are very very popular, tons of people are calling in.
My little experience in few countries lets me think that the problem is not the airtime, the problem is not paying more than airtime, the problem is the return on investment. People pays for service that brings more to them than the cost (saving costs, saving travel time, increasing income, etc). Few very specific stories i had from last week was as simple as women producers beeing so happy to be able to stay at home and look after their children while being able to phone to see if there are customers for their products, rather than going to the market and visiting all the usual buyers. They were spending up to 10.000CFA airtime (15eur more or less 20$) in the month mostly for that.
steph
@Stephane - what is very costly in most setup that are deployed today is the human-handling of the calls ... the major bottleneck today, that the technology could easily fix in a very near future.
If I really understand the above statement, then I will disagree with you, Stephane! Correct me if I mis-understood your statement.
I believe the human aspect is key and remains important in information provision for agricultural "production" - market information may be possible.
I worked as agricultural extension officer in a developing nation for over 5 years. With that experience, I will tend to differ from aproaches that aim at replacing intermediaries with ICTs/mobile technologies. There is the need to improve the brokering process rather than removing it completely. ICTs are "communication technologies" to support human activities. For example radio messages may be used to create awareness, signal, and disseminate information on new innovations/technologies but may not be appropriate for providing the technical know-how or training in the use of the innovation.
We see TV commmercials in the US that are returning to "human focus" services rather than automated messages.
If the cost in handling those call centers is an issue, we will need to see how we can manage that rather than trying to "fix" them purely with technologies.
Ben
Ben,
you are making a very valid point and that surely need further discussion. I totally agree with you about the fact that human are critical. I also totally agree that there are informatin that would need more than audio or sms message, but will require physical training on the know-how.
That said, i believe we all agree that there is a huge needs in terms of information service at the farmer level. I'm sure you will also agree that given the number of extension agents in the field, the more we can save their time, the better they can serve farmers. So all the points, imho, is to remove people where they are not critical, so that services can increase in quality, quantity, and efficiency.
So my reasoning was the following: we are having a discussion on how technology can help farmers to receive information that don't need to be conveyed by extension agents. SMS is a barrier for lots of farmers, because of the litteracy/interface/language challenges. So let's use another technology, voice, to deliver the same info, but with the same objective as having an automatic system.
Because if you have people in call centers, that can handle up to 70 requests a day, I'm not 100% sure that you have improved the extension agent model at all, and that people in the call center who not be more efficient in the field as extension agents.
Steph
Hello Stephane,
Many thanks for your insightful contributions to this discussion!
I just wanted to comment on your assertion that a call centre with handling capacity of 70 requests per day may not be an improvement on existing in-person extension service delivery.
As a matter of act, I have been working on some research on the efficiency of extension service delivery and I find that extension agents in Ghana are occupied by the delivery of technical advice roughly 15-20% of the time. Administrative and project delivery activities are prominent among their activities.
Certainly, it would depend on the level we are considering (district, region, or national) but responding to 70 technical questions per day strikes me as a considerable capacity. In many cases I would expect it to provide efficiency gains over in-person delivery. Yet, what I would be concerned about is the articulation of the demand for the service. From what we are seeing, in-person technical advisory services are triggered more so by the extension agents noticing the need and delivering the advice, rather than farmers expressing the demand.
Cheers,
Mira
Hello Stephane,
Many thanks for your insightful contributions to this discussion!
I just wanted to comment on your assertion that a call centre with handling capacity of 70 requests per day may not be an improvement on existing in-person extension service delivery.
As a matter of act, I have been working on some research on the efficiency of extension service delivery and I find that extension agents in Ghana are occupied by the delivery of technical advice roughly 15-20% of the time. Administrative and project delivery activities are prominent among their activities.
Certainly, it would depend on the level we are considering (district, region, or national) but responding to 70 technical questions per day strikes me as a considerable capacity. In many cases I would expect it to provide efficiency gains over in-person delivery. Yet, what I would be concerned about is the articulation of the demand for the service. From what we are seeing, in-person technical advisory services are triggered more so by the extension agents noticing the need and delivering the advice, rather than farmers expressing the demand.
Cheers,
Mira
I agree with Stephane about the challenges with the use of SMS 'today' in these communities but when we start thinking of 'tomorrow' and the rapid growth of technology, we will have no option than exploring some of these options.
The paradigm shift of agriculture from 'aid' to 'business' could also help overcome the challenge with sms use.
Firstly, this paradigm shift is resulting in gradation of farmers whereby semi-literate and literate farmers are emerging with agriculture as a business. The downside of that is, we are also creating some divide among these farmers. But we are talking about viable, scalable, commercial business models here.
Secondly, in some of the models that are being explored in Africa, farmer groups/coorporatives are the target rather than individual farmers. With that, it is expected that groups will definitely have literate members to take care of the intermediary role.
Ben
I think Ben is making a valid point. We should not focus only on what is here now but also on what is good for the future.
Here again, it doubt that SMS is the future. This is mostly due to the cost issue. Today the price per character is between 500 to 1000 times cheaper on a data connection compared to SMS. The limitation of character set (latin/ascii) in most network, plus the limitation in interaction and character lenght is another huge limitation. So if i had to bet on a future technology i would go more for data connection (GPRS is now available almost everywhere is a GSM signal) and target also feature phone that could support more advanced options, such as icon-based interface. I think that the future of access for those who cannot use textual interface is more likely to be such option. SMS was a good technology, it is still a good option for a given population segment, but it not imho a solution for the bottom of the bop, and is not a solution for the future.
steph
I appreciate the challenges regarding partnering with MNOs and would like to push the envelope a little farther.
Telcos are not in the business of increasing incomes of smallholder farmers. They are, however, necessary distribution channels for the delivery of information that will improve productivity/quality/prices and lead to increased incomes at a large scale. However, there are obviously different philosophies on how to achieve impact by partnering with telcos.
What are some of the approaches to reach scale and achieve impact at the same time? I would argue that content providers need to own the data and retain usage rights over it. Information needs to be made available to as many farmers as possible, not only those farmers that are subscribers of one telco or another. However, the telcos need to differentiate themselves in highly competitive markets. If they view content as a differentiator, they will not want other MNOs to access it.
I would appreciate the thoughts of this group on ways to resolve this conflict.
Hi All,
Here is my view on the barriers to reaching scale with mobile information services:
If right products in which the targeted beneficiaries find value are created, scaling should happen by itself. The question is how to create the right products for those who are in the very Bottom of the Pyramid.
Two major aspects which may be barriers in the scaling up mobile information services are :
Accessibility
Affordability
(Accessibility is presumed to include ' access to MNO for smooth and easy enrolment process and Point of Presence for post-sales service either for communication or for availing information services')
However, once the mobile network is well established and the affordability improves they can be seen as opportunities for large-scale mobile information services than barriers in scaling up.
Other barriers to reaching scale with mobile information services are:
1. Infrastructure strength and Reliability of message delivery : An MNO not having a strong presence in a region has less effective infrastructure and hence less reliability in delivery of messages to the customers.
In many developed countries, reach and quality of network coverage poses an impediment for scaling up. The MNO can support by ensuring adequate coverage, quality of coverage in terms of signal strength and reliability which will be a hygiene factor for providing information services.
2. Cost of delivery mechanism : The type of delivery mechanism has a bearing on its cost. OBD (Out Bound Dialler) disseminated over a voice message platform are costlier than SMS (text) messages.
Technology platform should be robust to handle high volume of OBDs within stipulated time. The MNO can facilitate smooth integration for monitoring data related to delivery and technology platform.
3. Low Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) of Customers : ARPU of customers is a measure of profitability for the mobile network operator. Low ARPU of customers , especially at the bottom of the economic pyramid having high price sensitivity becomes a barrier in scaling up or even the sustainability of the Business Model.
4. Language & Literacy: In a country with a lot of regional diversity in respect of language and literacy, aggregating precise and pertinent region-wise Content in the scaling-up process is a challenge.
5. Technology: Most economical feature phones are being used by the BoP subscibers with content dissemination through SMS and Voice messages. For them smart mobile handsets and higher generation data services are out of reach.
6. Govt. Policies : Govt. policies and regulations should enable scaling up and should not become an impediment.
Hello S Srinivasan,
You have articularteled very well the main challenges in reaching scale with mobile Information service. I would like to comment on ARPU.
The MNO needs to be creative about new services that they can add to the mobile information service and also look at other sources of revenue than the customer. Two examples that comes to my mind are :
- The MNO can generate revenue from companies who want to reach speciifc farmers for advertising or understanding of customer behaviour. Providing advertising channel and data information will be considered a premium service
- Additional services can be added to the mobile information service, like Mobile money, mobile insurance and health insurance just to mention a few. These services can complement each other to make the combined product more sticky.
The MNO need to be aware there are untapped opportunities which still needs to be explored.
Mr. Nweke,
I agree with you.
Offering a bouquet of mobile services related to Financial, Health, Learning/ Education and so on to the rural subscribers and bringing in an improvement in the quality of their living will result in their stickiness. It will also lead to an inclusive economic growth of the rural population.
S.Srinivasan
Thank you everyone for the very interesting discussion so far. I’d like to add to the point raised by Hillary, Mr Srinivasan and Sharbendu about farmers’ low willingness to pay for agronomic information and the associated low ARPU (average revenue per user) for mobile network operators. This is clearly a barrier to reaching scale with information services whose target market is smallholder farmers at the base of the pyramid. However, there are emerging examples of business models that are tackling this challenge by drawing on other revenue streams aside from the customer. One example is to offer a subscription to agribusinesses who would benefit from using the service to send targeted information to their contract farmers (see the Resources section in the forum menu - Chapter 5 in the Agri Vas Market Entry Toolkit has other examples of possible revenue streams).
The question I have is, how do you ensure there is a balance between providing a service that farmers trust (ie. the information is relevant, trusted and actionable) and reaching scale and financial sustainability by relying on companies who may have their own agenda?
I’m sure they’ll be more discussion on this when we get to Question 5: [Opens 29 Nov] - What are the methods for sourcing appropriate content to be delivered to farmers, what standards should be followed when disseminating information to farmers, and who is best placed to manage quality assurance?] but I look forward to any comments here on the issue of scale.
Hi All,
I agree with S.Srinivasan that scaling up mobile services is not a major problem a such, but the whole issue is what value is giving the farmers. Once they find out that their problems are being addressed through mobile services, then they will all turn to it as their savier
Having read the two comments above, I wonder if we need to define what reaching scale in a successful way means?
IKSL and Reuters Market Light have reached some degree of scale in terms of the number of farmers they reach with SMS but this does not mean they are yet financially sustainable.
Something to ponder and maybe clarify, if participants think it is important.
There are very insightful comments from participants, provoking us to think out of box. Here are my few ideas to add up to this thread...
1. When we think of intermediaries, somehow we start imagining them as interpreters of information, while they can actually play a much larger role. As interpreter of information (the so called knowledge workers) no viable business model can evolve (One World South Asia-Lifeline, is a case in point). However, as Information brokers, buying and selling information at farm gate, there is a possibility of evolution of a sustainable business case. Question is who will buy what information and at what price and in which delivery model. There is no readymade answer, but according to me it is worth investigating this new business concept, as information brokerage is fast growing as a business in non-agriculture segments for example while one searches Google, in the back end there is a business model of advertising revenue.
2. Another point which comes up from the discussion is reduction/removal of layers of intermediaries for information reach the target user. I fully agree with that and CABI has already taken up this as new focus area of research through the Direct2Farm project, which key objective is enabling farmers to seek and source information, tailor-made to their individual need, at any time in any form/format. This is why the project is called Direct2Farm, which means we do not see the role of intermediaries as interpreters of information to the farmers. However, this needs significant innovation in terms of technology and user interfaces, considering that the farmers have simple questions which need highly sophisticated scientific knowledge to resolve. Today very few technology organizations are working on practical farmer centric applications (mobile applications to be specific) and this is according to me one key bottle neck.
3. The third issue is uptake by users (farmers). Even if the information reaches the farmers, how many of them are ready to buy them? Uptake is one key consideration factor which in my experience keeps MNO-s apprehensive about investing in mobile agriculture information VAS. There are several aspects of this. Unlike entertainment VAS, utility VAS like agriculture information may not be purchased by user just simply because it is available. One of the key apprehension which farmers have is about quality of information (accuracy, effectively and trustworthiness of information provider). Agriculture information is dispersed amongst various institutions with completely different set of operation principles and organizational set up. Hence it is very difficult to establish a quality standard, and in reality lot of time information sent to farmers are not at all correct or applicable. Farmers only need actionable information to solve their problem and they are not interested in general knowledge. Agri-information service providers must keep that in mind if they really want to achieve scale of their services.
4. Even when there is information, which farmers really want to buy, there is issue of a sustainable business model to sell them. Rural ARPU is much lower than urban ARPU while agro-information subscription will always be costlier than a caller tune. So even if farmers are ready to pay, MNO-s cannot sell them the service if the farmers do not have enough talk-time available with them. In India, “life-time free SIM cards” enables a subscriber to keep on receiving calls while there is no talk-time available. This is more so in case of rural customers and this is one of the major reason for high churn out of rural utility VAS customers. Here a talk-time based model like IKSL probably can work better.
continued....
continued from earlier post...
5. Lastly according to me, to reach scale in a successful way, the service provider should be able to increase serviceability without matching investment in infrastructure (use of technology for increasing service efficiency). Intelligent applications and new technologies (e.g. Cloud computing, inference engines, iconic SMS-s etc) will play critical role in that.
Simultaneously, agri-info service providers and MNO-s should also look for innovative infomediary models, to be attractive enough for rural youths as business. This will in time may evolve as a major non-conventional marketing channel for MNO-s which will ensure that agro-info services will get enough investment commitment from MNO-s to build and grow their business.
I want to react on the information broker concept. I understand the value, i understand the concept, but i slightly disagree on it in fact.
First of all, there are lots of other issues related to intermediaries that i didn't mention. One we are experiencing in Mali: 100% of the people who have the ability to be trained to become intermediaries are male because they usually had the opportunity to have a better education. 83% of the producers we are working with are female. This is a major gender issue.
Second point, the availability of and dynamism of the intermediary is also a key dimension. Some are very excited, some are seeing that as a very minor job and therefore are not very dynamic and available, severly impacting the people they are supposed to serve. This is life, and this is happening. If you want the intermediary to be paid fulltime, then again you cannot make your system sustainable (same issue as human-driven call center).
Finally, it is the aspiration of all people to become independent, particularly in access to information that are critical for their life and their income.
I visited grameen CKW in 2009, and had discussion with farmers. in the two villages we visited, all farmers always said that they would like to get the same phone as the CKW (believing that the trick is in the phone, and not realizing they would not be able ot use it). I think this is a normal human behaviour. Being the oracle for information is a position of power, and all humans aspire to access himself directly the information he needs. From a fairness perspective, and given that today there are technologies that make this dream possible, it is critical to go in that direction.
Steph
Not wanting to be overly simplistic, but could we then say - all other issues held fixed - that this human desire to be independent in information access bodes well for these information services reaching a sustainable scale?
Literacy situation act as a barrier to communicating new ideas to farmers and also because most farmers have lower level of education.The mobile operator can help by giving the mesages in the languages that can be understood by the farmers.
Bernard Bett
Hello to everybody and many thanks to GSMA and to FAO/e-Agriculture for organising and hosting this forum.
I would like to share my perspective based on my current Indian experience, looking at the potential for ICT mainstremaing in Agriculture and reach the largest possible number of smallholders.I percieve the critical challenge for achieving impact by any ICT platform, especially mobile as one of most promising technologies, as the result of the triangular tension between the 3 key success factors: a) scale in terms of farmer reached b) content quality c) use of the information by farmers. This tension is well expressed already the various comments on partnerships and scale made by the forum participants. I see lots of trade offs between these ingredients rather than a set of different recipes.
A concrete example based on this framework can be made by using the IKSL as a prominent case represented in this forum.
IKSL has shown the great scale of farmer reach (more than 1 million farmers) through an MNO approach and with plenty of business sense for a major mobile operator of the caliber of Airtel. Yet, evidence of actual benefits and use by farmer of the IKSL service is hard to prove at this scale, mainly because of the large fluctuation of the subscriber base to the service.
On the other hand, decreasing fluctuation by increasing content quality as palusible remedy, is in tension with the difficulty of deliverying quality content to such a scale and in variety of agro- ecological zones and socio- cultural settings (capacity problem).
In my opinion an important factor of the IKSL scale success is linked to the partnership with IFFCO, a 40 year old co-operative with capillary structure in the majority of all Indian states. This structure has been a powerfull marketing outlet for the Airtel Green SIM cards, supporting the IKSL mobile information channels. In short IFFCO, as MNO partner, is a special case that has forged a special type partnership with an MNO of difficult replication. By contrast, IKSL working on a much smaller scale and by associating with NGOs development programmes, has shown potential of increasing its impact and relevance at farmer level (e.g. the goat project case). Yet, this has follwed a different delivery model. This included complementing the m- service with face-to-face contacts, need based delivery of info, mobile access to women, and presence of complementary services (accees to loans and SHG mobilisation services).
This success is limited to the area of intervention of the specific NGO and again in negative tension with scale. To what extent this partnership approach will be econmically viable and attractive for MNOs outside ad-hoc pilots, has yet to be seen. In fact, it is plausible to think that investements, to link with different agricultural programmes and repurpose IKSL content and platform to suit the specific context needs, may be too high.
To sum up, on the basis of the IKSL experience, I see in future a great potential for the use of mobile to deliver advisory services at a scale to farmers. Yet, any similar approach from both private sector and public sector aimed at mainstremaing m-services in agriculture will have to find acceptable trades off with the other two remaning factors of the framework.
P. Ficarelli,
You have posted an interesting analysis. I have a few points to make in this regard.
To improve the effectiveness of its services, IKSL promotes Communities / Groups with members having a common interest, say a common crop or a common livelihood. This provides an opportunity to extend focused services to the members of the Community. The voice messages, support on helpline and other programmes are customized/ tailored to address the common/ collective interests of the community. In these initiatives, often, IKSL partners with NGOs , Self Help Groups (SHGs), Cooperatives, Institutions who have interest relevant to the group. Intensive engagement with the participants is a major feature of this approach.
While micro nature of ‘a community’ may not yield scale, the underlying approach is to cluster the existing scale into ‘communities’ for quality content. In this process the focus is to view the farmers as groups with homogeneous needs. While forming communities, our major emphasis is on finding a collaborating partner - NGO, institution, organisation with stake / commitment to the Community with common interests. This approach enables obtaining feedback on the usefulness of the services - preferably in a participatory environment. This strategy could be slow in building capacity but very well addresses all the ‘tensions’ outlined in the Post.
Hello Everyone, I believe the use of SMS varies with regions. In Uganda SMS is widely used even in the rural areas and some farmers access market information which they use to make informed decisions. What has made a difference in Uganda is that farmers are encouraged to get organized in groups and in most cases at least the leader of the group is able to interpret messages for those that are not literate.
We operate a market information platform where we share market information for major markets in Uganda. What happens is that the farmers send us prices in their regions and they access prices from other markets. By providing us with prices from their regions, they are able to compare with prices from other places. Sending prices on our platform is free but accessing the information is a cost to the user. In this way we are able to get some revenue which we use to incentivise those who send us messages. For instance we offer prizes to those who are consistent and provide accurate information.
What about Voice?
We are also operating a Voice Messaging Service which we are using to inform/sensitize farmers on key issues across the value chain. I must say operating a Voice Messaging Service is not cheap. And the cost of each call is far higher than text SMS. However, the impact of a Voice message is so enormous. The model we are currently using runs like this, the Ministry of NGO working with farmer group records a message informing farmers say of an disease outbreak, when to plant, when to apply herbicites etc. The service is also used to conduct survey and sometimes find out whether farmers understood a particular sensitization campaign. Responses from farmers can only be closed ended. So they choose among the options provided. The beauty with this system unlike SMS is that calls can be made in any language. Secondly the system provides call logs for every concluded campaign which shows the date, time and options the recipients chose. Messages can be replayed. The beauty with our service is that is can even call outside Uganda but international rates apply. We however negotiate based on volume.
We are now moving towards enabling farmers to query the system and recieve responses. This will take a while but we shall get there. Because we operate as a business, we believe farmers can part with a modest fee to access information. Farmers organized in groups tend be more active than individual rural farmers. That is why farming in Uganda especially in rural areas is done in groups.
@bruce: your case is interesting. You are saying that in Uganda use of SMS by farmers is not a problem. I'm quite surprised. What I've seen in rural areas, and particularly discussing with grameen foundation applab people, they have developed their CKW concept (community Knowledge Workers) specifically to adress the issue of sms usage.
Are you working in a special district ? or perhaps you could related your work with grameen, the difference and commonalities in approach ?
thanks
Steph
Yes, farmers widely use SMS in Uganda. The question should be, what do they use sms for. Can farmers read technical information in English using sms, some but not all. I mentioned that the trick behind working in groups is that at least one member or the head is learned enough to interpret messages for the entire group. I know Grameen and their CKW program. The CKW use Android phones which are expensive and I do not think the farmer would even be interested in that. Secondly, they need internet to access the technical information provided on the Android phones. That is why farmers can only access this information throught the CKWs who are incentivised to provide this service. That is why text SMS is still widely used because it works with any ordinary phone and does not require internet access. I think USSD will be the next step in providing more information to farmers using ordinary phones because its cheaper than normal text SMS.
The question I always ask myself with the Grameen model is that if Grameen pulls out, will the CKWs maintain their support for the farmers? The answer is NO because am very certian that they cannot afford monthly internet connection and I doubt if they can do their work without an incentive.
That is why every activity that we carry out with farmers is accompaied by a business model for sustainability purposes.
There are a number of valuable and interesting points being made in this forum, and I'd like to offer a perspective from the standpoint of an organization delivering a solution that includes both intermediaries as well as Direct-to-Farmer mobile services. Given the breadth of topics, I'll focus here on one: the role of SMS vs. other channels. I would welcome others' comments and input.
While the foundation of the CKW program is the human intermediary network due to its focus on the poorest and most marginalized farmers, we also see SMS, data, voice, USSD, SIMs and radio all as critical channels for delivering targeted, relevant and actionable information to as many farmers as possible, when and where they need it. We started by developing data-based applications for use by CKWs using Androids--which have the benefit of providing location data (a key to the value proposition for partners utilizing the CKW network for data collection), but have developed or are developing a number of other services targeting farmers who have access to their own phones, and who live too far from a CKW or other extension agent to receive personalized information on a frequent basis. The common denominator is the underlying content - which is leveraged by all of these channels. While at first glance, it may seem that these other channels/apps could compete with CKWs, we believe the services are highly complementary, and see a number of factors that will keep CKWs highly relevant to the poorest farmers, even as mobile phone penetration increases in rural areas: Personalized service: CKWs see many farmers, deliver lots of information, and begin to see what works best in their own gardens, and for the farmers they are serving. They become roaming “reference librarians” who can provide not only the scientific information, packaged to be easily understood, but also share highly localized tips that may be most likely to work for a farmer in their own service area. As such, CKWs provide a very personalized service that is most relevant to the farmer. Size of CKW service areas: Another factor is the difference between CKWs’ ability to personally serve all 500-800 households in their service areas, and the level of mobile phone ownership, which today is ~10-15% in CKW-served communities. Even if phone ownership in CKW areas reached 60% of farmers (2x the national average), the average CKW would still have over 175 registered households without phones to serve, vs. the average of 66 served today (this varies based on how long a CKW has been operational), so there are still be many farmers without phones who will need CKW services, not to mention the millions outside of CKW-served communities. Difference in Pricing: Because farmers do not pay for CKW visits (partner organizations seeking to reach farmers with agriculture information, or collect data via surveys, pay for CKWs to visit farmers) CKWs’ income is secure even if farmers begin using other mobile services. A related question is why a farmer in a CKW district would use a fee-based mobile service if the CKW services are free. The answer is that CKWs can only frequently serve a small % of the farmers in their service area. Today, most CKWs only frequently serve the farmers within 1km of their home, though they officially serve a 5-10km area. As such, farmers in the remaining 4-9km area need a service they can access more frequently, and for those that have a phone, an SMS, USSD, voice or other service is valuable for certain types of information. Higher value activities for CKWs: As mobile phone penetration increases, CKWs’ work will evolve to higher value activities, as GF provides opportunities both within our programs and elsewhere. This may include supporting services like mobile money, providing counterfeit seed identification, certification for fair trade goods, and supporting the distribution of inputs such as seed & fertilizers, etc. Given the level of experience CKWs are gaining, they will be sought after by many different entities in the agriculture sector. While this is beneficial from a sustainability standpoint, GF will play a strong role in ensuring that incentives remain squarely focused on serving smallholder farmers as the top priority. To summarize, while I am a huge believer in the intermediary approach to delivering information, this is in the context of serving the poorest farmers. There are millions of other farmers who have or will have access to mobile phones, and I believe that intermediated services go hand-in-hand with Direct-to-Farmer services