The success of the monitoring and evaluation data in agriculture by using ICT tools depends on the achievement of many challenges for the realization of the common survey like the time taken to respond to the survey ; the structure of the question and the interest to respond quickly the survey. The farmer of developing countries has not the custom of writing and reading and it is why he spends few time in responding the survey, and so, another challenge of the success of the monitoring and evaluation of agriculture data should be the shortness and the relevance of the question inside the survey; the question have to be direct and obvious for anyone, moreover  the farmer must understand that it is for its proper interest to answer quickly to the survey online through mobile phone. In addition, I am unsure about how to certify the relevance of the survey which could be endangered by spam or untruth messages sent through mobile phones. By the way, the challenges quoted above ‘data integrity; privacy and security; technical and human capacity issues; storage; and connectivity' remain fundamentals in the developing countries where companies of mobile telecommunications are still competing in deserving the broad public in good connectivity, nevertheless the permanent good connectivity is upcoming, consequently, only farmers with high income may choose to include many network cards in their mobile phone for optimizing the connectivity with different mobile phone companies   Besides, I imagine that the success of monitoring and evaluation data in agriculture sector will depends also in the future to the adaptation of the ICT in the automatic collection of some data specific to the agriculture issues such as the weather condition like temperature and altitude, I believe that the sensor of temperature could be integrated in the mobile phone in order to allow it to send automatically some accurate information which should afford to estimate the dryness or the dehydration of the area where the survey is being held, as a result, some data sent by the respondent should be validated by the a fair third party which should be the automatic calculation of the system inserted in the mobile phone   Prof Antoine KANTIZA, Master Uticef,- E-mail :[email protected] or [email protected]

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]

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,-

 

  In order to acknowledge the market information retained by the Burundi farmers who daily use cell phone, I visited a vendor of imported seeds located  in front of Regina Mundi Cathedral at Bujumbura in the morning of Friday on December 16th, 2011 where a farmer from Isale district, expressed its concerns related to the awareness of the coming of fertilizer in their district: “ Many projects send fertilizers in our rural area and we do not know it before the price was augmented by traders who bought it in the early hours “ and he added that “the scarcity of fertilizer is like sugar".   “My close trader of Bujumbura calls me and advice me that I can collect my harvest or let it because Bujumbura market has or has not a need of new food supply” said Kirazungu a farmer of fruits and vegetables from Gisagara in Isale district. However other farmers who do not have the same call, brought theirs products to measure their business luck and may find that the prices have dropped. It means that farmers without close relationships with traders could not get the added value from their cell phones. Moreover, another farmer of Isale area said that its cell phone allows him to do not travel toward the famous Bujumbura market even for acquiring the payment “ if the main road of my countryside was straight and modern, I should call my close trader to wait near the Bujumbura market, a truck full of my harvest and he should send the payment by the driver”   I asked Kirazunga of Gisagara if he often calls the vendor of seeds and he seemed to be very worried : “ I lost forty two thousands of Burundi francs and the vendor do not pay me back the money because the seeds did not grow” and the vendor reacts on the same moment that Kirazunga did not inform him, for instance he should have sent his agronomic support appointed by the private providers of seeds in East African Community, to follow-up in Burundi the fields where the seeds have been planted and if it was confirmed that the seeds were not good, the vendor had to reimburse the cost of purchase lost by the farmer-customer.    The vendor of imported seeds asserted that he has a good relationship with its customers among them are many farmers and showed me a list of phone numbers  which belongs to customers whom he have to call regularly in order to inform them  about the availability of some kind of seeds and also affirmed that  he has to command the seeds abroad through e-mail and if he has to travel toward Kenya supplier, it is only to ensure that the seeds are well packed and he did not travel anymore in Netherlands, he wait the seeds by express mail.   In abstract, it is obvious that the challenger farmers of Burundi beneficiate the awareness of essential market information from their mobile phone in gathering on time some important market information which help them to take a decision-making like buying some inputs or selling their harvest however many farmers are disappointed that they could not easily write or read SMS because their cell phones are not configured in their native language Kirundi but in foreign languages like French or English.   Besides, it is not true that the cell phones are used mostly by farmers in order to increase their economic welfare, because Burundi wisdom said that “It is worth joking more than cultivating = Ikiyago gisumba ikivi said in Kirundi language” and also only competitor farmers like the farmers of Cibitoke or Isale areas, who have almost finished the fundamental school, know how to exploit the speediness of market information through ICT tools such as cell phones.

 

I think that this article should be joined with my paper inside the latest forum related to the impacts of ICT in agriculture initiatives, available on the link below: http://www.e-agriculture.org/forumtopics/week-2-what-are-critical-operational-aspects-process-capturing-impacts-ict-initiatives-a   Prof Antoine Kantiza, Master Uticef.

I appreciate very much the insight written by Shahidi,  and I add that the Bangladesh case related to the effects of mobile phone on the agriculture information is somewhere similar with the current situation in Burundi.

Nevertheless, traders as well as farmers of Burundi do not have an unique platform of sharing agriculture information like e-Krishok of Bangladesh, many traders of Burundi get information about the highness of production in agriculture  and they do not reduce consequently the price and it has been seen that each storekeeper of Burundi keeps information for himself and he knows how to pay in secret to its providers before asking them to do not reveal the real price. It means that the information exchanged through cell phone belongs to the receptor who could use these information for its own speculations.  Before the civil war, the national daily news of Burundi “Le Renouveau ” used to publish agriculture information related to the availability on the market of some agriculture products like beans or rice consumed regularly in Burundi, but nowadays, such information are not available anywhere even online or through cell phone. I think that a strong partnership public-private is needed for supporting farmers in sharing information and for collecting and publishing through cell phones the daily data related to the agriculture information. Indeed, I try to believe that openness of market in the agriculture sector is reliable to the right information exchanged among the storekeepers and farmers, also these  right information could incite the investments in the agriculture sector where it is remarkable  that the agriculture sector is held by poor population who could not innovate or extend the space of their fields in order to increase the volume of the production and accordingly to reduce the price instead of reflecting inflation which displays the lack of food stock, so I do not expect great thing of the only current proliferation of mobile phone in Burundi in favour of what I call “ manipulation through cell phone” instead of bringing right information among farmers or storekeepers as I wrote it  in another forum of e-agriculture published in French language on the link below : www.e-agriculture.org/forumtopics/question-3-lundi-23-mai   Prof Antoine Kantiza, Master Uticef,-

  I think that the critical operational aspects of the process of capturing impacts of ICT initiatives in agriculture is related to the methodology of measurements of the impacts of ICT in agriculture and for this, the measure chosen to be used must be no questionable and may be neutral in the front of the captured impact and within the agent who is using it.; the measure should be a proven statistic method for qualitative analysis or a  true measure of volume of production using quantitative analysis or the mix of the two methods.   I think also that we must define the kind of impacts that we have to measure: the productivity or the income of the farmers and so on but we have to understand that the agriculture sector is under an open system and for this, we can imagine that those impacts could have been happened in the favourable case due of combined factors among them could be the good weather; the improvement of techniques; the prevention of diseases and the use of the ICT. I think also that we must be sure of the start time and the final time of the measured  impact, it means that the impact could have been raised just in the beginning of the project and stabilized or fell after a short period during the project.   Besides, the context of the agriculture activities as well as the level of education of the agents involved in the agricultural or pastoral sector are fundamental in the process of capturing ICT impacts; the farmers living in some developing countries are living in middle ages, for instance, some people of East Africa are living in situation of poverty with theirs numerous cattle or believe that the all lands or the cows are still belonging to them when farmers of developed countries know the logic of market through ICT as it is shown in the below website :http://ontariofarmer.com/sitepages/   In conclusion, those measurements of ICT impacts target the goals of improving the agriculture and the livestock and it is why I try to believe that the best ICT initiatives in agriculture of the developing countries which are my concerns,  should not lead  to the speculation of artificial price on the market but in the sharing credibly information among farmers and with the centres of public support or with storekeepers in order to ensure the increase of theirs productions or incomes., in the other words, the ICT initiatives in agriculture should be a good way of granting agriculture’s education and rational behaviours to the farmers of developing countries.   Prof. Antoine KANTIZA, Master UTICEF,-

 

Bonjour tout le monde, Il y a une sagesse populaire qui affirme que" même pour les sérieuses révolutionnaires chinoises, après la longue marche, la langue marche" et Dieu seul sait combien les Technologies de l’Information de la Communication offrent un cadre idéal d’intoxication et de manipulation qui aboutissent à des distorsions de la vraie information et qui peuvent engendrer la zizanie et la violence, et pour démontrer que la violence commence bien souvent par une communication contre-productive, je mentionne cette citation d’une reine malgache des siècles précédents et qui a dit ceci « chez nous ce sont les hommes qui font la guerre et ce sont les femmes qui leur disent contre qui se battre », ladite reine n’a pas ajouté que les instigatrices finissent en fin de compte par subir les effets collatéraux de la violence induite à partir de leur sublime suggestion. A mon avis, je pense que tout est question d’éducation, il y a moyen d’affiner un système de communication productive au sein des communautés rurales et cela en faisant la promotion d’une technique de communication à travers les TIC qui soit de nature à favoriser le développement agricole et le monde rural. C’est dire qu’il existe une technique de communication intra-communautaire qui puisse être adaptée au développement du monde rural, et je pourrais paraphraser en disant ceci : "Dis-moi comment tu communiques et je te dirai dans quel environnement tu vis". En effet, la libre association dans la communication à travers les TIC, peut enrichir le débat et non orienter les interlocutrices vers l’objectif du développement du monde rural. En conséquence, je propose que des projets implantés auprès des communautés rurales participent à l’amélioration de la stratégie de communication des femmes du monde rural et que les bailleurs de fonds et les autres partenaires qui s’intéressent au développement du monde rural financent les communautés rurales dans la rationalisation de leur système de communication par les TIC. Il serait utile de lancer des campagnes de communication du genre «  Communication utile », « Communiquez sans manipulation » , « Parlez-moi plutôt de l’évolution de votre projet  d’auto-développement ». Ces campagnes d’éducation à une communication productive pourraient être menées à travers les téléphones mobiles ou les sites web en ligne accessibles aux communautés des femmes rurales. Ceci dit, les TIC constituent de nouveaux défis, qui, s’ils sont bien relevés et utilisés à bon escient, rendront le monde rural plus florissant et plus prospère. Cordialement à vous, Prof. Antoine KANTIZA, Master Uticef,-