Bangladesh Innovation & Experiences: Making ICT Work for Rural Farmers and Entrepreneurs

13 May 2010, ITU HQs, Geneva

Various entities from Bangladesh have been closely involved in the United Nations WSIS summit process since its very inception. The process which started in PrepCom is being actively pursued by various practitioners, policy makers and other stakeholders. Having traveled halfway through to the 2015 goals, there is no better time than this to do a stock-taking exercise in order to assess how different actions lines are being implemented in Bangladesh. In addition to that this session takes an additional step to focus on showcasing benefit of the intended target groups through different ICT initiatives. The initiatives showcased in this session fall under Action line C3 and C7. Reza Salim (Director, Amader Gram ICT for development Program of BFES) firstly opened the session by stressing how Bangladesh has been involved in the WSIS process and welcomed the moderator, H. E. Md. Abdul Hannan, Ambassador, Bangladesh. The first speaker Dr. Kashfia Ahmed, CEO, WIN Inc. elaborated on development of agriculture content that is delivered through different ICT platforms i.e. telecentres and mobile telephone. This presentation took a close look at the existing content development process, the partners involved in it and their roles. It also shed light on how government is involved in the process and how partnership with the public sector can be strengthened further. The second speaker for the session was Shahiduddin Akbar, CEO, Bangladesh Institute of ICT in Development (BIID). Akbar shared his experience of trying to ensure last mile coverage of the telecentre based initiative so that farmers avail solutions pertaining to their agriculture problems and thereby benefit from it. Having been involved in the process of establishing telecentre in Bangladesh, with a proper business model, Akbar was faced with the challenge to bring the farmers into these telecentre and use it as a means to solve their livelihood related problems. So, to address this issue an awareness building campaign was designed to demonstrate to the farmers the benefit of using this alternative source of information. This experience was crucial in establishing the fact that through such hand holding exercise the benefits of ICT can be demonstrated to the rural community. The next presenter Mirza Farzana Halim, Business Consultant, Katalyst, focused on a mobile telephony based initiative providing agriculture information to farmers. This is a multi-stakeholder partnership that adds new dimension by introducing a revenue model for all parties involved. In order to ensure sustainability of any such project, it is imperative to make sure that there is a business interest of the private sector in offering such value added service. This presentation also focused on some of the facts and figures of impact on the end users. This service has also received recognition at home and abroad for the outstanding results it has brought. The last speaker of the session was Sabbir Ahmed of Swisscontact. His presentation focused on an emerging working model of public-private partnership and some of the early signs of impact. This model shows how public and private sector can work together by capitalizing on the complementary resources or strengths of these organizations. It talks about a PPP model in Bangladesh, where fertilizer dosage is provided to farmers through different ICT platforms (private sector) by using database developed by the public sector. These platforms complement the existing government extension work by creating alternatives sources for the farmers and being endorsed by the government adds to the credibility of these private sector owned channels. Another thing that comes out quite clearly is the facilitation roles a development agency can play in the partnership building process. While this service holds immense potential, as evident from the early impact, it still faces some challenges which need to be overcome in order to ensure its sustainability. Such initiatives while shows a lot of promise in achieving the 2015 goals, there need to be constant evolvement and evaluation of the process so that they can cater to the needs of the intended target group in the ever changing environment. The session ended with these discussions from various group of audiences.

The session was also addressed by Gitanjali Sah from International Telecommunication Union stressing Bangladesh initiative could be replicated in other countries. In His concluding remarks Ambassador Md. Abdul Hannan said that, these initiatives are very much supportive to build an inclusive information society in Bangladesh.

Mirza Farzana Halim