Building an ecosystem around data: using interactive radio for accountability to farmers in Tanzania

The Listening Post is a project by Farm Radio, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, with the aim to put the farmer as a leading actor in the agricultural development. The vision is to have a two way communication between policy-makers, NGOs, extension officers, agricultural researchers and the farmers in their fields. The goal is to ensure their initiatives are responsive and accountable to farmers.

The Listening Post is an interactive radio series aimed at an audience of farmers. The project uses mobile phones, multimedia and FM radio to build a two-way communication relationship with farmers. The Listening Post Service in Tanzania will gather stories and information from farmers using SMS and beep-to-vote polls and field trips by radio producers and broadcasters.

This research studies the impact of the Listening Post, aiming to assess its effectiveness for improving inclusive and participatory agricultural development and discusses the potential of a feedback model to enable collective civic action for extension services that are responsive to the priorities of smallholder farmers.

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