In Ghana's Upper East Region, an agriculture extension worker may only visit a village once per year.  And then, he -- because it's almost always a male -- gathers the men around a tree.  But the women --who do much of the actual farming-- are busy caring for children, and may not hear how to improve their crops, how they can plant differently by spacing seeds out to an optimal distance, or prepare their soil differently. All things where they didn’t need to buy some special seed. Instead, it was just doing things a different way from what they’ve learned from their ancestors.

And even if they do listen while doing childcare, how are these people without literacy going to remember the new techniques?  How will they ask questions, get answers, reinforce this new knowledge?

If you don't have literacy, you can't write things down... what you learn in one hour may be forgotten or confused the next day.

This is where a simple audio computer that speaks in local language can really help.  In fact, families that had intermittent access to Talking Books, grew 48% more food in a rigorous pilot study, published in the journal, Information Technologies & International Development, and summarized here: http://www.literacybridge.org/our-mission/pilot-results