Introduction

I am Dr Michael Njume Ebong, Chief Executive Officer of Chede Cooperative Union Ltd in Cameroon, with sister entities in Ghana, France, Netherlands, Switzerland and United Kingdom. We focus on three, inter-related areas of poverty alleviation in rural areas: producer-support services; agro-processing; and local, regional, and international marketing of the produce of our members, which are all village-based farmer groups (cooperatives and common initiative groups). Our interest in participating in this Forum is not to extoll the benefits of ICT for rural communities (that must be a given), but rather to learn from other participants how the prohibitive costs of ICT, especially mobile telephony, as currently witnessed in Cameroon, could be managed to ensure that this new tool does not further impoverish our farmers wishing to join the digital age.

Hello Hector. We are glad you have joined the forum and look forward to your thoughts in this discussion. Please be sure to look at the question and discussion going on now under "Discussion - Week 1". Cheers, Michael (FAO)

Hi Dr Ebong, and thank you for joining. Over the years I have seen the cost of many ICT technologies raise concern in the development sector, but costs do tend to fall over time and I think more importantly there are many innovative solutions being developed to provide better information more efficiently. Let's look for some of these ideas in the main forum discussion. We also hope you'll share your experiences and perspective from Cameroon. cheers, Michael (FAO)