Innovation needs in African agriculture
Mobile services in agriculture used for information services, creation of new learning tools and market updates seems to be the area where the speed of innovation is now seriously picking up in Africa, as mobile networks have reached critical size and penetration to allow for new application creation. Sida is arranging a seminar titled "Can mobile phones improve agricultural productivity, resilience and food security?" 29 May at their HQ in Stockholm together with the Swedish International Agricultural Network (SIANI). View programme here.
This invite reached me at the same time as I was finishing reading the book "The New Harvest. Agricultural Innovation in Africa" (C Juma, 2011) which contains many interesting examples of mobile and ICT innovation for agriculture in Africa, as well as outlining other areas that are in need of development and innovation. In ICT one example mentioned is the Grameen AppLab and their project in Uganda which aims to provide Community Knowledge Workers with a number of information services to reach farmers nationwide.
The New Harvest is excellent reading to get a structured overview of advancements in science, technology and engineering as well as to understand what the key opportunities and challenges are. The author is mainly calling for more academic and institutional investments, since Africa's agricultural productivity has grown mainly thanks to technical progress (not efficiency changes and gains), but there is a clear linkage, in most of the book's case studies, to collaboration with the private sector. Juma points out that the creation of agricultural enterprises represents "one of the most effective ways to stimulate rural development" as we have seen in the seed industry, and to some extent in food processing.
Mobile great - but don't forget the value of "old" technologies
There are interesting examples of the use of communications technology in food processing as well. One very practical take-away from this book, is the results of a study in Benin, which looked at new ways of spreading the use of new technologies and techniques. Video proved to be a very powerful and low-cost medium for spreading new ideas and practices to farmers, e.g. a video on improved parboiling of rice lead to 72% of farmer starting to use such new equipment. This compares to 19% uptake among farmers who attended (traditional) training workshops. When a group of women farmers who had attended workshops also watched the videos their usage of innovation, as well as their own creativity to continue improving methods, increased further. Since the book provides an overview, with this and other examples, it is a good idea to check out the sources since they often provide the context and more data to understand if they may be applicable in other situations.
An interesting aspect of the current innovation in the agriculture sector is the simultaneous development of the service and knowledge economy. Agricultural businesses can therefore become the locus of learning and driver of a society's development of a knowledge economy, an important aspect for governments in creating national and regional innovation systems. And an area to continue exploring and developing for entrepreneurs in the field.
The first part of the question that SIANI and Sida's seminar posted ("Can mobile phones improve agricultural productivity?") is clearly "yes", and we will be keen to hear whether there are already proof of increased resilience and food security as well.