Question 3 for discussion Thursday, 20 Nov.
Here is the third question for our forum discussion, and the final one for this week (new questions will come next week). Please reply with your experiences, thoughts and ideas: How have mobile telephones enhanced rural livelihoods socially and economically? Try to present evidence based examples where ever possible, and focus on the impact on livelihoods (not the technology itself).
Information dissemination pertaining to agriculture through affects the livlihood of the small and marginal farmers.For example the price and the aggregator information on mobile phone helps the farmer in making appropriate choice in selling his produce at a remunerative price .A pilot project under ekutir banner is being implemented in India to test the success of three different models and the success of that will be shared with the forum.Till now the information empowerement to the farmers is enhancing his social personality and income.
Hello, This is such an important question. I'm aware of a lot of anecdotal evidence or hand-wavy arguments, but maybe we could use this question to try to collect resources providing strong evidence and rigorous analysis of the social and economic benefits of mobile phones for rural areas. I think Jenny Aker's paper [url=http://are.berkeley.edu/~aker/cell.pdf]"Does Digital Provide or Divide? The Impact of Cell Phones on Grain Markets in Niger"[/url] is a great example of this and would like to see more like it. Héléne Martin [email protected]
Hi Helene, I agree both that this is an important issue and we do not have enough substantive evidence to support our belief that there is positive socio-economic impact. It would also be interesting to know if concerns about potential negative impacts, not to argue against the use of mobile phones, but to prepare ourselves to mitigate the negative impact. (I for one believe that technology is basically neutral - we need to apply it in appropriate ways to get positive impact.) cheers, Michael (FAO)
Hello Kirshna, That is very interesting news about the ekutir pilot project. Would you be willing to share with us some details about the three different models being tested, and some preliminary feedback (if that is available)? Thanks so much! Michael (FAO)
Hi!, Everybody This is a very very important question which needs to be addressed while inroducing 'm-agriculture'. Though there were no impact assessemnt studies on improvement of livelihoods through the use of mobiles in rural areas, there are several instances where farmres are beneftted by knowing prices, buy getting customers, buy getting orders, buy avoding undue 1. visits to cities etc. through the use of mobiles. The following reports give some information on the usage and impact of mobiles in improving agricultrue in rural areas. "Rural India Calls" http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/life/2007/09/21/stories/200709215001... 2. "Mobiles will revolutionise seven sectors in rural India - Nokia, CKS Contributed by Michael Schwartz , http://www.cks.in/html/cks_pdfs Regards, Janaki
About 3 months ago while traveling back to my rural province from a conference in Manila (Philippines), I had the chance to talk to a middleman/wholesaler of agri products. It was a long travel so we had a long conversation too. She's engaged in a buy-and-sell business: she buys fruits and vegetables in bulk from my province and sells them to small merchants in another province, and likewise buys livestock from that province and sells them to merchants in my province. In general, she was happy about mobile telephony as she was able to have constact contact with her family while she's away from home doing busness, but on the other hand, she was sad because of some reduction in her business opportunities. With cellphones, she said, her contact farmers are now able to determine quickly which traders within and outside our province offer higher prices. Many farmers, she said, are now transacting business directly to merchants, practically eliminating the middlemen/wholesalers in the chain. In the Philippines, middlemen/wholesalers play a major role in the product distribution chain from the producers to the consumers, and they generally earn more money in the process than the farmers themselves. There is this practice that middlemen/wholesalers loan out money as well as agricultural inputs and equipment to the farmers, with the agreement that the produce of the latter will be sold exclusively to the former. With mobile telephony, the farmers are now contacting financial institutions and their well-off relatives for their production capital and logistics. Also, the farmers' knowledge about the quantity and dates of delivery of products to buyers help them avoid the situation of bringing back their produce to the mountains or selling them at very low prices as most of their commodities are perishable. Jimmy
Another advantage that's been brought by mobile telephony to our farmers is the significant reduction in their frequent travels to our province's Farmers Information and Technology Services Centers. With their cellphones, they can now interact (text, voice and video) with our agri technologists and resolve issues and concerns instantenously. Except, of course in such instances where they need to go to the Centers for more information, or where the technologists themselves need to go to the farms to have a first-hand assessment of the complained situations. The early resolution of our farmers's problems (plant diseases and infestations) brought about a certain level of "safety net" against production risks and losses. Jimmy
Hello all, I am fearing that mobile phones for development becomes a hype like once the start of ICT4D projects. There are lot of amazing and valuable examples for the usage of mobile phones, but there are not enough studies and analysis for the impact of projects around mobile phones. Promising however is the innovation through mobile phones by users themselves. They apply, hack and adapt existing technologies for their own needs. Here some critical, but interesting articles: There is an interesting study by Kathleen Diga in a rural district of Uganda (http://mobileactive08.org/node/982), whether mobile phone drive people further into poverty, or is it advancing the livelihoods of the poor? The study found that owning a mobile phone did both, depending on how it was used. It also stresses that women were still disempowered in terms of access. [quote]The research looked broadly at technology spending patterns, specifically mobile phone use in households and what people were giving up to get mobile phones. This ethnographic study in rural Uganda focused on women. The study found that the women got income either from husbands - about $1 a day, or from small business. In 2007, when the study was conducted, 3 minutes off-peak talk time on the same network cost about 40c - which equated to about 40% of the daily household budget. Given this substantial comparative cost of communication, the question was hence what were they giving up in order to use mobiles? Giving up travel, for instance was seen as a benefit given the costs of transport. Other households were giving up store-bought food - sugar, flour, oil, etc. In this case, those who had gardens could substitute with home produce while those without gardens actually gave up food. [/quote] Syed Mohammad Ali from Pakistan also stresses on women and access: (http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008624story_24-6-2008_pg3_3) Development: Development through mobiles [quote] Unless the prevailing range of gender-related hurdles in availing the opportunities being provided by communication technologies, it is likely that women may become further marginalised from the economic, social, and political mainstream of their countries.[/quote] Another critical article: Mobile Activism or Mobile Hype? http://www.comminit.com/en/node/270107/38 Best regards Christian
I wanted to address yesterday's question about impact, as well as today's question on how mobile phones have enhanced rural livelihoods economically. As Ryhan Ebad has already said in response to Wednesday's question, there is too little known about on the impact of mobile phones in agriculture. I completely agree with Helene that there is a lot of anecdotal evidence, but not enough formal evaluation studies have been conducted to demonstrate clear trends. TradeNet/Esoko recently conducted a telephone survey of 70 randomly selected people who receive SMS alerts in Ghana. The people interviewed were asked numerous questions, including "Do you use the information you receive?" and "Would you be willing to pay for the alerts to continue?" 79% of those interviewed said they would be willing to pay to have the alerts continue. We have achieved the greatest results in terms of improved economic impact with producer associations that are actively engaging their members. It appears that the greatest success comes through constant reinforcement of trainings on how to use information and continual explanation of the benefits to the farmers. With this crucial support, these farmers have capitalized on the opportunities. For example, the Social Enterprise Development Foundation of West Africa (SEND Foundation) is one of our paying group clients that has established an active program in Northern Ghana with three farming cooperatives. They are profiling their members on TradeNet/Esoko and signing up members for automatic SMS alerts on prices and offers. One of their members, Kujo Asumah, receives weekly price alerts on groundnuts from all major Ghanaian markets. He told our interviewer that during a recent encounter with a trader, he was offered GHC 320 for his crop in Tamale in Northern Ghana. However, because of the alerts, he knew he could get much more in Accra about 700 km away. Therefore, he organized transport for himself and was able to double his income to GHC 672. Another yam producer, Jonathan Abudu, was selling 1,200 yams. Local traders in Tamale were only offering him GHC 56 for 100 tubers, so he arranged to transport his products to Kumasi market where he sold them at GHC 82 per 100 tubers. He knew the price in Kumasi was higher because of alerts and the training he received from SEND. We have several similar anecdotes gathered from other associations in Ghana. These are anecdotes, but we have found that without structure or organized associations to follow up with these producers, it is difficult to obtain the information on improved livelihoods. As a technology company, we can track every single SMS that is sent out and who it is sent to, but it takes a lot of additional resources to find out if and how that information is being used. One of the results of this recent survey is that we plan to put a more structured monitoring and evaluation program in place with our paying group customers to not only capture these stories, but demonstrate clear economic improvement over years.
Michael - The question is very interesting and important because in my opinion there are not so many quantitative studies of the effects of ICTs in rural areas. Even less are the studies focused on micro-level. Study cases and qualitative analyses are common to find, quantitative analyses not (yet?). In my opinion the main reasons of lack of evidences are that ICTs is a recent issue and historical data is not available, ICTs can influence many aspects depending on the use of technologies (consumptions, productions, free time, employment, …), the data is difficult to get and the economic models must consider several variables that can be influenced by the use of ICTs. The analytical evidence of the effects of ICTs in rural areas is fundamental for address policies and investments. Until we cannot quantify the effect of ICTs it will be difficult change policies and mitigate the negative impacts. I am doing researches on the evaluation of economic impact of the use of ICTs using household models, so I am very interested on this area and looking forward to hearing your thought. [url=http://www.e-agriculture.org/550.html?&no_cache=1&view=single_thread&cat... Giacomo[/url]