the Poor internet connection has sometimes failed us to communicate to farmers effectively. for instance in Nakaseke Telecentre we are running a farmers Market Platfrom using frontlineSMS the cloud version which required internet.
The Farmer's makert plaform, here we send farms sms on commodity price changes and weather updates to enable them plans and have build their bargaining power with the buyers.
As Peter describes poor internet connectivity is a hard constraint as are other items like lack of cell phones, ecosystems of cashin/cash agents, lack of mobile devices for agri extension agents, etc. Soft constraints can be items like lack of awareness, education and training throughout the rural value chain. If seems a safe assumption that market dynamics will soon further reduce or eliminate the hard constraints. I say this because global, regional and local private sector players are continuing to embrace the potential of making money at the base of the economic pyramid by streamlining their supply chain(s) and, as well, there are initiatives such as the Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) http://a4ai.org/ . Therefore, within the development space it seems we can get the biggest 'bang for our buck' by embracing the need and programming for inititiatives/programs/projects that promote awareness, education and training. Further, these initiatives should be done within the framework of cross-sectoral partnerships with; private sector, civil society, government and other stakeholders in order to coordinate reponses to the increasingly 'wicked' issues related to rural resiliency.
We should note that within the ICT4Ag space which began a little more than a decade ago the major focus was developing 'apps'. For the most part ICT4Ag to date has had little scale and sustainability because the 'apps' were primarily designed with the thought that farmers will pay. Unfortunately, even though they can be great for the farmer our farmers live such a hard life they can only, and must, make their decisions on a short term, day-to-day basis. Nevertheless, we now have ubiquitous ICT4Ag 'apps' so it seems the way forward for ICT4Ag Version 2.0 is that we move the app business models farther up the value chain to stakeholders with the financial capacity and built-in incentive to connect with their smallholder producers. Within the framework of cross sectoral partnerships for ICT4Ag Version 2.0 we must 'institutionalize' the promotion of ICT awareness, education and training within targeted value chains not only amongst farmers and other rural citizens but within the management and staff of other value chain stakeholders. This type of 'training' of multiple beneficiaries is a core capacity, and is part of the mission, of the development sector.
Expanding Lee’s categorisation we can identify four main constraints to applying ICTs to resilience. Two hard (technology, finance). Two soft (human, institutional).
My experience is that a great deal boils down to one human issue: motivation. Lee’s ICT4Ag example illustrates this, and reflects the broader lesson that motivated humans will overcome many other constraints to make ICTs work for resilience. But removing all other constraints will have no value unless there’s a core motivation for people to use the ICT solutions on offer.
We describe it as the ICT4Ag prime question: stakeholders ask themselves “What’s in it for me?”. Unless we can provide an answer to that question, use of ICTs for resilience-building will be road-blocked.
Under the two soft (human, institutional) constraints, and especially related to institutional, I would also add enabling environment as a key constraint. For example, countries, due to several reasons including security concerns, invasion of privacy, among others, are putting restrictions on the use of drones or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and if this is not properly done it will impact negatively on the use of drones in resilience related work.
Today we open our third questions to the forum - thank you to all those who have already contributed and we hope to read more in the following days.
There are many challenges - that still persist - and some of you might have found sollutions to overcome them or work towards those sollutions. We hope to learn more about your experiences under this question too.
Previous questions remain open and we encourage you to add links to additional information where possible.
I want to describe here in details the live experience of Nano Ganesh ICT implementation in India and how we had to improvise our strategies from time to time with maintaining the basic goal constant. Constraints faced by us were outcome of the basic ground realities in the farm irrigation. As Nano Ganesh ICT is based on the effective mobile connectivity, all factors associated with the telecom infrastructure are vital in the effective operation of ICT. But, beyond these,,there were so many other controlling factors in the rural sector which decided the success of ICT.
Please refer the following facts which generated the constraints in adopting Nano Ganesh ICT -
Irregular electricity in villages in the emerging market – It was difficult to demonstrate, install, test and commission the products during the day time due to erratic power.
Difficult terrains approaching towards the pumping installations – Field engineers faced logistics challenges during odd hours. Many times the engineers had to walk down a distance of 5 to 10 kms towards the pump sites.
Resistance of the technocrats to work in the rural sector. There was a need of dedicated and passionate techies committed to work for a mission.
Extreme hazardous conditions at the water pump sites – The pump area is wet and shock prone. There are animals like snakes, rats, panther etc. near the water zone.
Telecom infrastructure challenges in rural area - We had to spend a lot on boosting the wireless range with the use of external antenna in deeper pockets, vallies and hilly sites.
Illiterate user class and stubborn conventional mindsets – A pump operator does not break the conventional shell of routine laborious routine to adopt the modern technology. Huge pioneering efforts are consumed in building confidence among them for the use of ICT.
Heavy expenditure on advocacy, marketing, advertisements, promotion, training, after sale support etc. These expenses drain a huge margin of the revenues.
Aspirations of farmers increased due to awareness programs and technology advancements without revenue traction.
Challenges in generating Investment for the expansion - Generating a sustainable and scalable business model was a real challenge to convince the investors due to heavy expenditure in the point no. 6 above.
Low cost needs- Considering the heavy cost and time incurred in the R&D as well as promotion campaigns, the practical cost aspired by the farmers and breakeven cost of the entrepreneurs did not match. In spite of pay-back period of only three months, capital investment expectation was too low in the initial phase as farmers did not want to take risk on new products.
Buying inertia is high - More time was consumed to percolate the product into the market. This did not fit into the finance calculations of the investors.
Business revenues are down in the period of summer and rainy season. It is a big challenge to arrange for the specific business model to engage the work force for optimum production in this period.
Expenses in advocacy of the energy and resources importance - As energy elements like water and energy are provided at subsidized cost or almost free, the precious value of these energy resources is not being acknowledged and there is a huge wastage of energy elements. A big investment in terms of time and advocacy is incurred in convincing these facts before the promotion of the products.
Competition due to local short term players after techhology is accepted – As huge time is invested in pioneering the technology, local competition starts when the real business and revenues start building up. This consumes heavy investments in fighting against the short term players who spoil the market and run away from the battle field.
Unpredictable purchase cycle due to unpredictable natural disaster, falling of market rates, government policies etc. - During the marketing and promotion of the products, the farmers appreciated and shown the interest in the ICT but did not buy the product by his own financial or any un predicted reasons. Even after paying 25% of booking amount, they did not turn to buy the product till 2-3 years.
Implementation rate of ICT on the field is too slow as compared to the ICT evolutions day by day. There is a big gap in the technologies evolution and their implementation. Please read the blog on the Challenges in this website only. Here is one live example how we had to change as per the market situation during 2009. We used Nokia 1200 basic mobile phone (2.5 mm headset socket) for Nano Ganesh integration. We demonstrated it in Mobile World Congress, Barcelona in the innovator competition held by Nokia and we were announced The Grand Winner. But, when we returned to India after a huge achievement, a news was in the Indian mobile phone market that Nokia 1200 model has been discontinued and it was a big blow to us. We had a big loss and had to re-integrate with new mobile devices with 3.5 mm jack. In the next blow, we had to discontinue these models and switchover to new designs after Nokia feature phones were out of rural market from 2014.
The above list of constraints indicates the volatile conditions and how much difficult it is to implement ICTs in the rural sector. One can easily understand why it is important to build a specific business model which takes care of mitigating above challenges and riding swiftly against the unpredicted rural dynamics. We shall surely discuss the mitigations and success factors in the next topics.
In spite of all above challenges, I personally feel that its a thrill to work for ICT for Resilience because ultimately we are serving the population who fights against all odds for bringing food on our table. It is an exciting experience to receive a word of appreciation and blessings when ICT serves them effectively and..... here is a start of a different loop of success for the further growth.
Designing ICT in such a way that they respond to a need in terms of service, as well as a product for a firm, an Ngo a public agency. In a such perspective, ICT service for resilience can lead to a sustainable business development while solving a "societal problem".
Affordability, accessibility
Promoters of ICT can be sensitive to not create a social differentiation between users and non-users. tarification to access ICT services can create social exclusion. In addition, ICT technologist development may co-construct ICT innovations in such a way to assure their great and easy adoption.
Crop cultivation is a complex process and involves a set of activities like land preparation, planting, pest control, irrigation, nutrient management, harvesting, marketing, etc. The entire cycle of crop production requires multitude of information by the farmers. Despite many efforts over the years to disseminate and transfer agriculture knowledge to the stakeholders, large amounts of expertise and knowledge are still out of reach to most of them. Agriculture knowledge may be contained in the corporate database, or it may reside undocumented inside the brain of the researchers or even stored in locations unknown to the majority of the people in the organization. Large sections of the farming community, particularly the rural folk, do not have access to the huge knowledge base acquired by agricultural universities, extension-centers and businesses. In this respect the main challenge is to find this knowledge and apply it to the decision making process involved in agriculture development. The main issue now is for organizations to recognize, locate and utilize this specialized knowledge; currently embedded in organizational databases, processes and routines as a distinct factor of production to increase productivity and competitiveness. Knowledge management is one of the tools for organizations to achieve the capabilities mentioned above to enable them to remain competitive in this fast changing world.
Over the years, many constraints and factors of success regarding content, capacity development, gender and diversity, access and participation, partnerships, technologies, and economic, social and environmental sustainability have been identified by ICT for development practitioners. I woudl like to make reference the FAO publication in 2015 on "e-agriculture 10 year Review Report: Implementation of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Action Line C7 ICT Applications: e-agriculture", by Kristin Kolshus, Antonella Pastore, Sophie Treinen and Alice Van der Elstraeten, Rome, Italy
They relate to :
1. Content - available - accessible - useable
2. Capacity Development - as enabling environment (no high taxes on equipment needed, a government support to the use of ICTs, recognition at institutional level that ICTs are useful and needed to perform activities, digital literacy of users)
3. Gender and diversity - recognizing the needs and ability of using ICTs developed for the users
4. Acces and participation - appropriate infrastructure, good quality access at low price, appropriate devices at affordable price for rural population.
5. Partnerships - need to have not only public, private partnership but also involvement of civil society and other non state actors
6. Technologies - developed for the users and not contrary
7. Economic, social and environmental sustainability - always keep the long term vision.
the Poor internet connection has sometimes failed us to communicate to farmers effectively. for instance in Nakaseke Telecentre we are running a farmers Market Platfrom using frontlineSMS the cloud version which required internet.
The Farmer's makert plaform, here we send farms sms on commodity price changes and weather updates to enable them plans and have build their bargaining power with the buyers.
As Peter describes poor internet connectivity is a hard constraint as are other items like lack of cell phones, ecosystems of cashin/cash agents, lack of mobile devices for agri extension agents, etc. Soft constraints can be items like lack of awareness, education and training throughout the rural value chain. If seems a safe assumption that market dynamics will soon further reduce or eliminate the hard constraints. I say this because global, regional and local private sector players are continuing to embrace the potential of making money at the base of the economic pyramid by streamlining their supply chain(s) and, as well, there are initiatives such as the Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) http://a4ai.org/ . Therefore, within the development space it seems we can get the biggest 'bang for our buck' by embracing the need and programming for inititiatives/programs/projects that promote awareness, education and training. Further, these initiatives should be done within the framework of cross-sectoral partnerships with; private sector, civil society, government and other stakeholders in order to coordinate reponses to the increasingly 'wicked' issues related to rural resiliency.
We should note that within the ICT4Ag space which began a little more than a decade ago the major focus was developing 'apps'. For the most part ICT4Ag to date has had little scale and sustainability because the 'apps' were primarily designed with the thought that farmers will pay. Unfortunately, even though they can be great for the farmer our farmers live such a hard life they can only, and must, make their decisions on a short term, day-to-day basis. Nevertheless, we now have ubiquitous ICT4Ag 'apps' so it seems the way forward for ICT4Ag Version 2.0 is that we move the app business models farther up the value chain to stakeholders with the financial capacity and built-in incentive to connect with their smallholder producers. Within the framework of cross sectoral partnerships for ICT4Ag Version 2.0 we must 'institutionalize' the promotion of ICT awareness, education and training within targeted value chains not only amongst farmers and other rural citizens but within the management and staff of other value chain stakeholders. This type of 'training' of multiple beneficiaries is a core capacity, and is part of the mission, of the development sector.
Expanding Lee’s categorisation we can identify four main constraints to applying ICTs to resilience. Two hard (technology, finance). Two soft (human, institutional).
My experience is that a great deal boils down to one human issue: motivation. Lee’s ICT4Ag example illustrates this, and reflects the broader lesson that motivated humans will overcome many other constraints to make ICTs work for resilience. But removing all other constraints will have no value unless there’s a core motivation for people to use the ICT solutions on offer.
We describe it as the ICT4Ag prime question: stakeholders ask themselves “What’s in it for me?”. Unless we can provide an answer to that question, use of ICTs for resilience-building will be road-blocked.
Hi Richard,
Under the two soft (human, institutional) constraints, and especially related to institutional, I would also add enabling environment as a key constraint. For example, countries, due to several reasons including security concerns, invasion of privacy, among others, are putting restrictions on the use of drones or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and if this is not properly done it will impact negatively on the use of drones in resilience related work.
Justin
Today we open our third questions to the forum - thank you to all those who have already contributed and we hope to read more in the following days.
There are many challenges - that still persist - and some of you might have found sollutions to overcome them or work towards those sollutions. We hope to learn more about your experiences under this question too.
Previous questions remain open and we encourage you to add links to additional information where possible.
Let us know if you have any questions.
Thanks a lot in advance.
I want to describe here in details the live experience of Nano Ganesh ICT implementation in India and how we had to improvise our strategies from time to time with maintaining the basic goal constant. Constraints faced by us were outcome of the basic ground realities in the farm irrigation. As Nano Ganesh ICT is based on the effective mobile connectivity, all factors associated with the telecom infrastructure are vital in the effective operation of ICT. But, beyond these,,there were so many other controlling factors in the rural sector which decided the success of ICT.
Please refer the following facts which generated the constraints in adopting Nano Ganesh ICT -
The above list of constraints indicates the volatile conditions and how much difficult it is to implement ICTs in the rural sector. One can easily understand why it is important to build a specific business model which takes care of mitigating above challenges and riding swiftly against the unpredicted rural dynamics. We shall surely discuss the mitigations and success factors in the next topics.
In spite of all above challenges, I personally feel that its a thrill to work for ICT for Resilience because ultimately we are serving the population who fights against all odds for bringing food on our table. It is an exciting experience to receive a word of appreciation and blessings when ICT serves them effectively and..... here is a start of a different loop of success for the further growth.
Market driven ICT tools
Designing ICT in such a way that they respond to a need in terms of service, as well as a product for a firm, an Ngo a public agency. In a such perspective, ICT service for resilience can lead to a sustainable business development while solving a "societal problem".
Affordability, accessibility
Promoters of ICT can be sensitive to not create a social differentiation between users and non-users. tarification to access ICT services can create social exclusion. In addition, ICT technologist development may co-construct ICT innovations in such a way to assure their great and easy adoption.
Crop cultivation is a complex process and involves a set of activities like land preparation, planting, pest control, irrigation, nutrient management, harvesting, marketing, etc. The entire cycle of crop production requires multitude of information by the farmers. Despite many efforts over the years to disseminate and transfer agriculture knowledge to the stakeholders, large amounts of expertise and knowledge are still out of reach to most of them. Agriculture knowledge may be contained in the corporate database, or it may reside undocumented inside the brain of the researchers or even stored in locations unknown to the majority of the people in the organization. Large sections of the farming community, particularly the rural folk, do not have access to the huge knowledge base acquired by agricultural universities, extension-centers and businesses. In this respect the main challenge is to find this knowledge and apply it to the decision making process involved in agriculture development. The main issue now is for organizations to recognize, locate and utilize this specialized knowledge; currently embedded in organizational databases, processes and routines as a distinct factor of production to increase productivity and competitiveness. Knowledge management is one of the tools for organizations to achieve the capabilities mentioned above to enable them to remain competitive in this fast changing world.
Over the years, many constraints and factors of success regarding content, capacity development, gender and diversity, access and participation, partnerships, technologies, and economic, social and environmental sustainability have been identified by ICT for development practitioners. I woudl like to make reference the FAO publication in 2015 on "e-agriculture 10 year Review Report: Implementation of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Action Line C7 ICT Applications: e-agriculture", by Kristin Kolshus, Antonella Pastore, Sophie Treinen and Alice Van der Elstraeten, Rome, Italy
They relate to :
1. Content - available - accessible - useable
2. Capacity Development - as enabling environment (no high taxes on equipment needed, a government support to the use of ICTs, recognition at institutional level that ICTs are useful and needed to perform activities, digital literacy of users)
3. Gender and diversity - recognizing the needs and ability of using ICTs developed for the users
4. Acces and participation - appropriate infrastructure, good quality access at low price, appropriate devices at affordable price for rural population.
5. Partnerships - need to have not only public, private partnership but also involvement of civil society and other non state actors
6. Technologies - developed for the users and not contrary
7. Economic, social and environmental sustainability - always keep the long term vision.