18 months later, International Telecommunication Union (ITU) estimates show that over 40 percent of Africa’s rural population has access to mobile phones, that at global level there are 4.6 billion mobile subscribers and ITU forecasts that by end of 2010 there will be 5 billion mobile subscribers.
These numbers make mobile phone the most rapidly adopted technology in history and the only sector that has not suffered from the recent economic downturn.
I’ve been reflecting why despite the well documented socio-economic benefits of mobile telephony, high penetration rates and the above encouraging figures, there are not equally compelling mobile applications for agriculture and for rural development in general?
I keep asking myself, with 500 million small farms around the world, why are not there applications such as M-PESA, Usahidi or Facebook for agriculture? Why have not applications such as Esoko, Farmer’s friend, Google Trader picked up like wild fire and become viral and mainstream like Facebook or Twitter?
More importantly, why has not m-development picked up like wild fire? Why is not the development world using mobile phone and turning it into a service delivery platform since it has the potential of facilitating the delivery of agricultural, financial, health and education services and also has the potential of overcoming isolation, poverty and creating more freedom?
Considering that mobility has become the preferred way of disseminating information because it is affordable and easy to use, I continuously ask myself why are not donor agencies embedding ICT components and m-applications across the board when designing and implementing rural development projects?
I was shocked to see that SIDA report on Innovative Use of Mobile Applications in East Africa did not include AGRICULTURE alongside financial services, governance, employment, education and transportation coordination as having a potential for m-application.
Pilot, pilot and more pilot
Over the last decade or so, governments, donor agencies, NGOs, private sector have designed and piloted ICT for development (ICT4D) projects. We can no longer effort just to pilot. It is high time to roll up our sleeves and start to design and implement sustainable ICT4D project and programmes.
According to the recent literature, the reason why pilot mobile applications fail to graduate to full-fledged comprehensive and sustainable service delivery applications is due to:
- lack of adequate infrastructure (towers, electricity)
- interventions not being scaled
- mobile applications poorly marketed
- low literacy rate among the target audience of these applications – mainly farmers, fishers, pastoralists, indigenous peoples living in rural areas
- lack of project sustainability and funding
- lack of coordination and collaboration among stakeholders across the different sectors
- general lack of investment in ICT applications by governments and donors
- lack of charismatic and evangelist leaders who push the agenda forward and attract investors after the pilot is over
Wanted: M-application and m-development
There is evidence that subsistence and smallholder farmers are increasingly using text, voice messaging and unstructured supplementary service data to access information, such as weather forecast and market prices.
At the same time, studies show that poor rural people are willing to spend more or less 50% of their disposable incomes on mobile communications.
Thanks to all the pilots, we’ve learnt that for m-applications to be successful they need to serve multiple purposes and at the same time have a functioning, dynamic and productive mobile ecosystem where different stakeholders are responsible for the following aspects:
- setting up
- operating
- sustaining
- expanding
- policy makers and regulators
- mobile network operators and service providers
- handset manufacturers
- content providers and application developments
- government and specific sector players
- private sector and small and medium-sized enterprises
- researchers, innovators and consultants
- civil society and users
While it may be true that donors and development agencies may not be engaged in first person in developing m-applications, however, considering that m-applications are part of the bigger m-development picture, they definitely have an important and strategic role to play, if for nothing else but to scale up the m-application implementation/adoption.
Definitely all the stakeholders and indeed donor and development agencies can:
- play a role in ensuring the m-applications are usable – there is no use of developing an application with lots of bells and whistles which does not do what it supposed to do, or worse, does not meet the immediate needs of the farmer
- use the learning from past failures and successes – which means that we all need to get better in documenting and sharing our learning
- use participatory approach and involve users in the design of the application and content creation process
“Clever people come up with clever ideas”
Over the last decade we’ve seen the socio-economic benefits of mobile telephony on the lives of poor rural people. We’ve seen how thanks to mobile phones those who were previously both socially and economically excluded are now actively participating in the economy and are able to connect with their families and friends. We’ve seen how basic mobile phone supports bottom-up economic development, provides entrepreneurship opportunities and gives a voice to poor rural poor. We’ve seen how mobile phones support the informal sector.We’ve seen how users have pushed the phone to its limit which has resulted in innovative uses such as integrating M-PESA application with mobile insurance schemes2/ , or Lifelink which allows users to buy water credit with their M-PESA account3/ , or a taxi driver in Zambia using his phone’s internet browser to diagnose diseases4/ .
We’ve also seen how money transfer applications such as M-PESA have created a new banking paradigm and how the “unbankables” today can save, ask for credit and have suddenly become “bankable”.
A 2009 World Bank report, building on the 2005 London Business School study that found that for every additional 10 mobile phones per 1000 people, a country’s gross domestic product (GDP) rises 0.5 percent, states that an increase of 10 percentage points in mobile phone adoption in a developing country increased growth in GDP per person by 0.8 percentage point.
To prove the above points, a recent study by Center for Global Development5/ , states that for example, in Uganda mobile phone coverage is associated with 10% increase in farmers’ probability of market participation for bananas, although not maize, suggesting that mobile phones are more useful for perishable crops. It also states that in Niger the cost of cheapest mobile phone is equivalent to 12.5 kilos of millet – enough to feed a household of 5 for five days - and yet the farmers are willing to pay this amount to get a mobile phone as this communication tool allows them to access and use information, find jobs and enhance their productivity.
The writing is on the wall, developing countries SEE and WANT mobile phones as their preferred information delivery systems. They see the mobile phone with a laptop lens which allows them to use it for transactions and at the same time provides access to data and information.
Partnerships – private and public sector
Everyone talks about partnering with the private sector. At the same time, increasingly private sector service providers have corporate social responsibility programmes. However, we know that a private sector company will not embark in an adventure if the initiative has little or no prospect for making profit. At the same time, we also know that the priority for private sector company is to come up with innovative products and services to maintain their market niche or to dominate the market.
Another important factor is that the private sector lives on the fast lane and fast track. Government, donor agencies and in general the public sector works within the confines of bureaucracy and this often does not resonate with private sector way of working.
So, quite frankly speaking, I see private and public sector as two separate circles, who are continuously struggling tofind an intersection point. However, the reality is that public and private sector live in different time zones and do not seem to have found their preferred collaboration tool which allows them to seamlessly work together and indeed create a win-win situation!
I also ask myself, if both parties were to find this intersection point, will it be a true partnership among equals, or a tug of war where one dominates and the other has to succumb.
Perhaps we all have to come terms with the fact that this partnership will not be on equal footing. Rather, if we want to achieve the bigger good, we need to abide by the rules of the “stronger” species. This begs another question, can we as development practitioners who depend on public money do so?
How to make m-development a reality
There are no ’ifs’ and ‘buts’ vis-à-vis the need to put m-development on the agenda of decision and policy makers. To do so, as development practitioners we should promote the idea of doing development using digital platforms.
This means we need to engage with, work with and invest in local talents – people who know what their peers want and need. At the same time we need to work on blending old and new ICTs so that we can reach out to the entire “user base”. If we get serious and do this we’ll end up converging what smallholder farmers, fishers, pastoralists and indigenous peoples NEED with what they WANT.
To create a virtuous circle and help poor rural people to come out poverty, while understanding the constraints of rural information economy, development projects need to ensure that smallholder producers are integrated and participating in local, regional and global markets and have access to:
- price information in such a way that they can make planting decision and not just focus on post-harvest
- good cultivation practice – pre and post harvest
- inputs, seeds, fertilizer and pesticides
- information on improved crop varieties, pest and disease management
- financial and insurance services
- weather information
For m-applications to be successful they need to use common and popular features and if local capacity is used, they would be able to cater for local needs, contribute to the economy and build local talents.
I am just wondering how long will it take farmers, fishers, pastoralists and indigenous peoples to become content producers and consumers? How long will it take them to develop their dream m-application allowing them to cover the entire value chain?
Can we possibly conceive of connecting farmers, fishers, pastoralists, indigenous peoples from across the globe by giving them mobile phones and 35 hours per week free airtime?
I bet you anything, once they get to know each other and start interacting with each other, they will start both sharing solutions and coming up with surprising and innovative solutions.. I bet you we’ll get some extraordinary and priceless input which will allow the bigger agriculture community to develop and implement a user-driven m-application.
What is stopping us from embarking on this journey? Who will be the brave person, donor agency, government or for that matter socially responsible private sector who will take it seriously upon themselves to get the ball rolling?
It does not take very much, just some will power….. And when there is a will there is a way!!!
1/ The Economist: The Innovative Use of Mobile Applications in East Africa, http://www.economist.com/node/15663856
2/ The Economist: Security for shillings, http://www.economist.com/node/15663856
3/ SIDA: The Innovative Use of Mobile Applications in East Africa, http://www.economist.com/node/15663856
4/ IPSNews: Welcome to my Taxi – Let’s do business with my cellphone, http://ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=52677
5/ Center for Global Development: Mobile phones and economic development in Africa, http://www.cgdev.org/content/publications/detail/1424175/
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17 comments:
There have been some innovative use of M-services, not a lot though and not enough.
Ghana they have a M wallet solution, good for rural areas, but as you say, it's often Pilot Pilot Pilot, and I've been down that road too often. It seems tehre is more of a industry in doing Pilots than roll outs!
John Hawker
I'd have to agree with you on this, Roxanna (although I think people are already serious, just that the focus is a little misplaced). I wrote about this a while ago:
http://www.kiwanja.net/blog/2009/06/the-folly-of-finding-what-works/
Hope it resonates.
Ken Banks
Great piece. Will share this widely
Don Richardson
I can understand that you may say that there are enough pilots and that we should start investing with up-scaling and diffusion.
In the process of social innovation piloting is stage 3. Stage 4 is sustaining and stage 5 is scaling and diffusion (source: http://www.youngfoundation.org/files/images/Open_Book_of_Social_Innovation.pdf).
At IICD we have been working for several years not only on the piloting but also on the sustaining and since a few years on the scaling and diffusion part of the process (see recent results in our 2009 on-line annual report http://annualreport.iicd.org/).
In that way piloting is an essential stage in the social innovation process. A lot of pilots is a sign that a lot is happening in the sector and this is good news. But indeed we should not get trapped in the piloting stage.
From experience we can say that scaling and diffusion are processes that need multi-stakeholders involvement. And this is where it is becoming a bit more complex than just piloting! Getting several partners engaged is nor easy nor fast (I speak from experience) and we learned a lot about what is working and what is not working. For this reason we can only stress as you do the importance of multistakeholders partnership building. But this is not easy and this may be a reason for having lots of pilots developed. The issue is that pilots should only be financed when there is already an idea of how to reach sustainability and how it could be scaled-up. For this reason I agree with you that there are enough pilots just for piloting.
The interesting thing is that I just wrote an article for MDG review that will be published by mid September (I do not yet have the link for reference - sorry). In this article we also conclude that multi-stakeholders partnership are key to success for scaling up!
The other interesting thing is that by mid September GKP (Global Knowledge Partnership) is going to offer this kind of services (building partnerships) to its members! As a member of the GKP Executive Committee I will be involved in this initiative. More information about this intiative will be posted on the GKP website soon(http://www.globalknowledgepartnership.org/index.cfm).
So to answer your question: GKP is already taking leadership to get the ball rolling!
Hi Roxanna,
Hello from Zambia. Indeed, there are enough pilots in Africa...
The multiple innovative technologies you mention all have merit but, as you say, we wonder why they have not been embraced at quickly as expected.
The mobile phone was embraced in Africa quicker than anyone expected, taking even the networks by surprise. Why? Because it's useful. It is an affordable (on a per call basis) tool that even the poor can utilise. The other more sophisticated services you mention require a level of wealth, literacy and often hardware that most rural people (subsistence farmers) simply don't have. This is the disconnect. If the service is simple, useful and affordable (make that "cheap") it will be used and you'll see the take-up blossom.
This is why I believe we should step back in order to move forward. Take a service and/or technology and un-pack it back to its simplest most basic component(s). Find that first level of service that made it what it is and deploy that into the developing world. If it's useful and affordable the users themselves will make it grow - probably straight back to something not dissimilar to what was originally proposed by the blue sky developers. The point is people must be allowed grow it not only developers and/or researchers. People grew the cellular market in Africa, not the networks.
With this in mind we are implementing a community pay-phone network in Zambia. Not a new concept but a proven one - and one that, for lack of an innovative network in the country, was never properly established in Zambia. With the benefit of significantly reduced call rates from a forward thinking network (MTN) for community phones those who do not have access to a cell phone or airtime are now able to maintain a level of communication we all expect in todays connected world.
This does not on the surface appear to be an earth shattering development but it is a start and one of few projects that has moved from pilot to implementation. By simplifying the pilot observations and recommendations that highlighted the need for a sustainable service infrastructure capable of delivering multiple public and private sector services to rural communities we now have a sizeable implementation that can naturally evolve into the comprehensive service infrastructure recommended. These community phones constitute the first of five levels of services to be made available to rural Zambians.
A small step in getting started with something real that works...
Posted by Dion Jerling
Great blog post. Mobile phones are powerful tools for global development - Roxanna Samii calls for innovators to find new ways to harness these tools.
Don Richardson
Yes, Ken & Roxanna
This is the high time to use mobile to address real world development issues, not for artificial/controlled pilots.
Selecting the right mobile tool also important
Sameera.
Posted by Sameera Wijerathna
Roxanna Samii has hit the nail right on the head! The reason donors and development agencies fund pilots and demonstrations is that they can do it without spending a lot of money! The reason NGOs collaborate on such pilots and demontration projects is that it is hard to refuse funding, however small it is. Very little forward thinking goes into the "what to do" if the pilot ends up a huge success... and this despite all the talk about outcomes, innovation and sustainability. They are exceptions, we all know a few. I for one like what IFAD and IDRC have done together in KM for agricultural projects, or what Microsoft, IDRC and DEZA have done with Telecentre.org. What is remarkable, is that the development community does get the scaling up idea; However it took an outsider, namely Bill Gates to start up a bunch of Global Alliances and fund them robustly to handle big poverty problems and social equity issues in health, nutrition, etc... So yes, we need more of these and ICT4D would be a good candidate... Like my colleague Caroline Figuerès commented above, the Global Knowledge Partnership, having to reinvent itself as a smaller and nimbler network - we call it GKP 3.0 - has precisely chosen to focus in the years to come on the diffusion of successful ICTs pilots of its Members. Please join us in the process of making this happen!
You touch on several issues in this post, but the underlying question you raise is valid: mobiles are an almost-ubiquitous ICT platform, so why aren't there more m-something development activities.
I can quickly think of 3 reasons:
1. Mobiles are too new. Only now do we see donors recognizing Apps4D as a valid ICT strategy, and then only in fits and starts.
2. Mobile operators don't care for donors. Mobile telco's are making so much money off users, they don't need nor want to deal with the hassles that come with donors.
3. Implementers (NGOs, contractors, etc) don't have mobile software development capacity. So they don't know how to price and deploy mobile applications.
very useful summary and suggestions Roxanna. Thanks!
Good write-up, but I think you've missed the one thing many government donors will need before providing the significant amounts of funding required for scaling up - evidence of impact. While I'm very familiar with the research on mobiles & GDP, can anyone point to research that shows that they have had a similar impact on morbidity & mortality in health, or similar measures in other sectors? Until this evidence is generated, large government donors will be hesitant to provide the funding - they're not venture capitalists & are generally risk-averse.
James,
Good point. However, as you undoubtedly know, all pilots have an evaluation and assessment which shows the impact. The trouble is that because they are pilots they are not at scale, therefore the impact is relatively "limited". It really becomes a chicken and egg dilemma.
And your comment that donors are not venture capitalists made me think that to embrace m-development, they have to become venture capitalist!
I'm no M&E expert, but there is a difference between project outputs, outcomes & impact (following the standard Logical Framework model). I have seen a lot of outputs, a few outcomes & no impact measures. But your point about the size of the interventions is a good one - at such a small scale it will be difficult to measure.
The other challenge is designing the evaluation - much of what we see does not meet the levels of rigor necessary to successfully change the minds of donors. Again, not being in a VC mindset, they'll demand much more from us in terms of evidence. As for them changing that approach, I don't think we'll see any major changes anytime soon. So, it's up to us to do the hard work...
Ya going beyong piloting and actual institutionalization or diffusion in the market, government services or community is important aspect.
Sometimes the challenges is multifaceted and it requires a multi-input approach to address social problems, likes problems of low productivity in agriculture is linked to farm to market roads, cost of inputs, transport system, education levels, value chains in the local market and links or access to national and international markets, barriers of rules, regulations, subsidy policies, and the like. Even if we have mobile penetration and donor projects to scale up, other barriers including peace and secuirty hits us badly.
there is a need to develop multi-input strategies and IC4D has this amazing charm to gel all stakeholders togather.
Amin Beg
AKRSP, Pakistan
www.irm.edu.pk/CommuniqeJul-Sep,2010.pdf
I should digg your post so other people are able to see it, really helpful, I had a hard time finding the results searching on the web, thanks.
- Murk
Unquestionably provocative articles. I enjoyed reading it.
Good point, though sometimes it's hard to arrive to definite conclusions
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