e-Agriculture for Rural Women Farmers: The WOUGNET Experience

Since inception in 2000, Women of Uganda Network (WOUGNET) has made various efforts in information sharing and promoting the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) among women and women organizations in Uganda. Currently, WOUGNET has over 100 women organisations as members, the majority located in urban areas and / or district towns where there is Internet access and a few in rural areas; on Twitter twitter.com/wougnet, SMS,  as well as online and face-to-face fora. The secretariat and a project office in Northern Uganda also house a Resource Centre with a variety of information on ICT for development.

 

With a vision of a society in which women are empowered through the use of ICTs for sustainable development, WOUGNET’s primary objectives are to facilitate access and sharing of relevant information by WOUGNET members in urban and rural areas in Uganda; to provide technical support to WOUGNET members in accessing and applying ICTs in their activities; and to advocate for the integration and promotion of gender equality into ICT policies and programs. Information sharing and networking is conducted in a variety of ways including through electronic mailing lists, a monthly electronic newsletter with updates on the activities of WOUGNET members and the secretariat, the WOUGNET website www.wougnet.org  , a print newsletter “WOUGNET News”, a presence on Facebook www.facebook.com/wougne

 

In addition, WOUGNET implements Access4Dev projects whose overall goal is to promote strategic and innovative use of ICTs for sustainable development with a focus on reaching out to rural women and women organisations. The first project “EAAI - Enhancing Access to Agricultural Information using Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in Apac District, Northern Uganda” was initiated in 2005 with funding from the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation ACP EU (CTA) and Hivos to develop and improve information and communication systems so as to enable easy access to agricultural information for rural women farmers via a variety of ICTs including mobile phones, radio cassettes, and community radio. Located in Apac town, the Kubere Information Centre (KIC) was established to act both as an Information Resource point as well as to support project implementation and two-way linkages with the women farmers. Two other key Access4Dev projects are the FAO/Dimitra Project whose goal was to empower rural populations and to improve the living conditions and status of rural women through information dissemination and exchange. Secondly, the Citizen Journalism in Africa (CJA) project, supported by Hivos and the European Union with SANGONeT as an implementing partner, sought to increase the capacity of organistions to write and disseminate information using online techniques in particular.

 

A recent evaluation of the EAAI project revealed that not only had ICT usage increased since inception, but the range of reasons why the rural women farmers used ICTs had broadened to include access to market information, reach out to agricultural extension workers, and participation in community radio shows as panelists and by calling-in. Nevertheless, the generally low literacy and income levels among rural women farmers do pose a challenge on the way that e-Agriculture projects have to be packaged to facilitate uptake and engagement with various ICTs. For instance, repacking information for SMS or radio dissemination, so that it is in a format that can easily be understood by the farmers requires expertise and time to ensure that information is not distorted, since it is most times scientific information. Project staff, fluent in the local language, have to be skilled and maintained to perform this repackaging work in addition to the need to build partnerships and collaborations with agricultural-expert organizations.

 

In spite of the challenges, WOUGNET remains committed to promoting the use of timely and relevant information in agriculture and rural development. Based on our experiences, some of the key lessons in improving ICT4D impact include:

 

 While e-Agriculture projects are possible with rural communities, no one technology can be used in isolation. Innovative use of available and affordable technologies has to be made.

 At infrastructure level, pro-poor gender-sensitive ICT policies have to be in place to support ready access to affordable high-speed ICT infrastructure.

 Partnerships and collaborations are of paramount importance. For instance, in the WOUGNET Access4Dev projects, it is important to collaborate with national and local agricultural research institutions, universities and agricultural-focused organisations.

 ICT projects at community level require time. Since ICT projects do not provide tangible inputs or outputs, people take long to appreciate them. The process of transfer from information to a final product is a process and the community needs time to understand, so such projects cannot be hurried or rushed.

 There is a clear relationship between the level of literacy and response to ICT-based innovations if community livelihoods are to be improved. In general, applications that are voice-based or image-based will fare better but may be more costly or more demanding of high-speed ICT infrastructure.

 ICT projects require social and technological skills as well as commitment of the various stakeholders.

 ICT projects can create an inclusive public sphere, for example, the aged, disabled can participate in such projects as they allow for participation in addition to anonymity and solidarity. For example, as a panelist in a radio show, one can reach out to a large audience where one may not be able to travel around much especially on distant rugged roads.