Peter Balaba
| 组织 | Nakaseke Community Telecentre |
|---|---|
| Organization type | Other |
| 国家/地区 | Uganda |
I have worked with Nakaseke Community Telecentre for the last 12 years as a program Manager .I am very passionate about using ICTs to disseminate information to the communities of Nakaseke District. I have initated an SMS platfrom to reach out to farmers,middlemen , agroprossor and Business community with price market information. I make two Radio programs on Agriculture every week and I love working and learning from farmers.
This member participated in the following Forums
论坛
ICTforAg2017 Conference - New Technology for Smallholder Farmers
I wish to make my little sumission to the above subject; In Nakaseke Tecelentre we established a frontlinesms- Cloud version where we have 1387 farmers and 96 buyers who communicate to each other through the platform. We route out sms on a weekly basis to update farmers on the current market prices and weather from www.yr.no this project was supported by Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands and Uganda Investment Authority to curry out the baseline research and trainings to staff and farmers.
Farmers are now very happy because they have been able to access accurate agricultural price information and they always call the center to findout the potential buyers.
To me I feel that such Open source platforms should employed to reachout to farmer's information needs.
论坛 Forum ICTs for Resilience
What are the specific constraints you have faced in the use of ICTs for resilience? (December 2nd)
the Poor internet connection has sometimes failed us to communicate to farmers effectively. for instance in Nakaseke Telecentre we are running a farmers Market Platfrom using frontlineSMS the cloud version which required internet.
The Farmer's makert plaform, here we send farms sms on commodity price changes and weather updates to enable them plans and have build their bargaining power with the buyers.
论坛 Forum: 2013 CTA ICT OBSERVATORY “Strengthening e-Agriculture Strategies in ACP Countries”
Question 3 (opens 28 Feb.)
And your focus on the intergration of ICT is very brilliant since mobile phones, Internet and Community radios are rapidly penetrating the far reached areas. However, packaging formats should also be put into consideration ( ICTs should be easy to use and interactive enough)
developing countries must have a clear strategy to reduce the information gaps between the exention workers and farmers. And once farmers are given all the necessary technical support. they will have no big trouble of accessing good markets.
Question 1 (opens 25 Feb.)
I have just looked at the Uganda National Agricultural policy( December,2011) and discovered that the issues of ICT intergration in market information was not fully considered!
Community Radios could be another avenue to channel through agricultral information to farmers but little attention was also given to this wonderful opprotunity. In uganda we have a total of 200 Radios and if the policy is desiged to at least each Radio to have a program on agricultural issues it can benefit the farmers and agro-processers etc.