Hello from Kenya / Afghanistan

Enna.. yes, we all love the idea of apps and cost can be a challenge but so is the cost of both the smart phone and internet access needed to download them.  So my 2 cents....

1.  Literacy is still a real challenge especially in arid / semi arid regions where cultures have been more isolated to commercial farming.  Classic content via sms may not be the best option unlike IVT etc... And even if they are semi-literate, most of them speak a local dialect that may not support immediate knowledge transfer in the classical form of their "mother" tongue.  I found this to be especially true here in East Africa where Swahili is the official language but very few farmers speak classic Swahili and instead speak a bleneded form with their tribal language.  So ... this may just be lumped into the feedback Marina gave on "language barrier." 

2.  Privacy ....This is still a REAL challenge for women especially in markets where they have very little personal privacy, let alone choiice or access to their own or the family's mobile phone. 

3.  Investment .... That's right. There needs to be more private secor investment.  Of course content is a challenge but so is the lack of agreements to reduce the costs Telcos can charge because I have seen some mercenary charges being passed through.  To make any model financially self-sustainable, these charges must be absorbed. 

4. Sticky content & National campaigns ... Good technical informaiton / advice should be coupled with campaigns from national Ministries . Working in a vaccum doesn't create any stickiness within rural communities. 

A little food for thought

Rachel 

Alberto ... Hallelujah !  More than changing the behavior of rural / smallholder farmers, we need to change our own behavior and set realistic expectations on any ICT tool, especially when many of them have been designed with a limited commercial approach.   

But as many projects / tools continue to focus on production, we ignore "access to market."  As farmers quality and yields increase, many continue to struggle to generate significantly more income because no one bothered to engage the commercial marekt.  Even if farmers want to attract new buyers, they don't yet have these skills or just the simple financial or technical capacity to move their crops to wholesale buyers.  

I am especially frustrated with schemes planning to export their products but havden't taken into account the need for food safety certifications like Global GAP, required by the EU. But even crash crops like coffee, tea and cotton require safe production and many buyers now require better traceability.  So more than just pushing contnet, we need to be able to pull data from farmers.  Along these lines, both Grameen and ESOKO have done some interesting work but am still unsure of both the potential for their financial self-sustainabilty and growth.