Field report from Cameroon
ICTs are definitely a ‘game changer’ in how agricultural production is now being negotiated. Traditional bargaining relationships in the value chain no longer apply. ICTs are mixing up who buys and sells from whom and at what price. In this transforming market place, ICTs will eventually help everyone compete.
In the remote Bokwaogo locality in Buea on the eastern slopes of Mount Cameroon, Mama Mologan Francisca battles with the soil, hurrying to meet weather deadlines for her maize and tea farm. She proudly owns land extending beyond half a hectare.
“This is my bread and butter. This is my life,” Mologan says. However, her journey has not been an easy one. In early 2001, she was a rich woman buying farm produce cheaply from farmers in the south-west region of Cameroon and supplying them with badly-needed sprayers, pesticides and improved seed at premium prices. “It fetched me much money,” she says. But the introduction of mobile phones shattered the profitable business leaving her in misery.
“Ma Mojoko came and taught the women how to use the mobile phones to know the real prices of pesticides and food crops on the market. After knowing the actual prices, they refused to deal with me, preferring to wait for buyers to come from Douala city and buy. I lost everything and my business crumpled,” laments Mologan. Ma Mojoko is Catherine Mojoko Molua, founder and president of Walana Wa Makwasi (women in action), a grassroots organisation founded in 2001 to boost the agricultural and technological skills of smallholder farmers in the south-west region of Cameroon. She presented her project at the ICT4Ag Conference in Kigali, Rwanda.
“The magic here is the mobile phone. We taught the smallholder farmers how to make a call and how to send an SMS in order to get vital information in real time. For the very first time, they were able to get information relating to planting seasons, know when and how to apply the right quantity of fertiliser, and very importantly how to bargain with buyers,” explains Mojoko.
Partnerships for the future
The ICT4Ag conference was a milestone for organisations like Walana Wa Makwasi, permitting them not only to share their experiences but also learn from others and seek partnership with founders of similar ideas such as Rural eMarket in Madagascar. This is a web-application that allows subscribed farmers and buyers to send and request information on prices and farm produce. “The mobile app gives the farmer just what he or she requires,” says Andrianjafy Rasoanindrainy, Rural eMarket project coordinator.
TRAC FM, an innovative software platform used by media and non-profit organisations, also allows users to amplify the voices of citizens, track reports, collect opinions and provide real time data. “So you can use the service delivery system to take informed action,” says Bart Sullivan of Farm Radio International.
“ICTs could transform rural agriculture,” adds Mojoko, who was looking for partnerships with innovators at the conference. Generally, the innovations presented were testimony to the importance that mobile apps play in boosting agriculture in rural areas of ACP countries. They are especially important in Africa where it is estimated that 1 billion people will have access to a mobile phone by 2016.
However, other experts are concerned about its effectiveness. “The mobile can help raise awareness and create commitment but, to really make the change at farm level, the best approach is still hands-on extension field workers because it is difficult to teach farmers how to plant or harvest through radio or text message,” says Raf Somers of the Belgian Development Agency, BTC, in Rwanda. It is also unfortunate that despite the growing interest of African rural farmers in ICTs, they are still handicapped by illiteracy. A problem that, Mojoko states, “needs to be redressed urgently by sending coordinators to teach them.”
Maximo Torero of the International Food Policy Research Institute regretted that, in spite of the scramble for the mobile phone, penetration in rural Africa is still below 50%. “And in terms of broadband, which I think is the technology we need to move forward, the penetration is extremely low. Governments should focus on ways of increasing access to broadband in Africa,” Torero strongly recommends.
Until then, the mobile phone still makes things awkward for the middlemen in Africa. ICTs have reduced them to subjects and raised farmers to kings. Mologan was smart enough to realise this and quickly adapted to the potential of ICTs. “After the initial difficulty, I decided to start farming and joined the Walana Wa Makwasi group. I was taught how to use the mobile phone to facilitate my farming. And today, after using the mobile phone to increase produce for 11 years, I live well. I was dead and now I am alive,” she says.
Arison Mbuli Tamfu, 2nd place winner
