Jaipal, Remote Rural Community, India

Jaipal is 27 and lives in remote, rural India. He cultivates crops such as sugar cane, potatoes, mustard and wheat. Because his livelihood is entirely dependent on his crops doing well, he values his ability to keep them safe and help them thrive tremendously. “To start with, good pesticides are essential”, he says, “to ensure that what I’m growing isn’t consumed by insects.”

He used to rely on elder farmers’ knowledge for such things, assuming that they had learned what they know through years of experience.

Jaipal learned that there is another, more accurate and reliable, way to get farming related information: mKisan (which means ‘mFarmer’ and is part of HandyGo’s Behtar Zindagi service), available through his mobile phone. “At that time, I had only recently started using my mobile”, he recalls. “It had been quite an expensive investment, though both handsets and calls are very cheap now.”

After subscribing to the service, Jaipal quickly began finding it really useful, and it has become the main thing he uses his mobile phone for. “It’s really helped me”, he says with conviction “Though I trusted my elders before, they weren’t right 100% of the time. Thanks to mKisan, I can be a lot more certain about which pesticide I should use when insects and other pests affect my crops.”

Florence, Kibera, Nairobi, Kenya

“The day my kid felt sick, the mobile phone gave me a chance. I just called the doctor direct and asked for the first aid I could perform to the baby. I found it made my work easier”

Florence is one of the approximately one million people who live in Kibera, the largest slum in East Africa. She lives with her husband Nicholas and one year old son Joseph in a 12ft by 12ft shack with mud walls, screened with concrete, with a corrugated tin roof and a dirt floor. Florence moved to Kibera five years ago from a rural village approximately 200km away from Nairobi.

She’s had her mobile phone for four years and in addition to using it in emergencies such as when her child is ill, she uses it to send pocket money via M-PESA to her brother who’s in school. Before M-PESA she used to send money home through other people, which was costly and time consuming. “Now with M-PESA everything goes through safely and at the same time you get the feedback that it has been sent or not”

Evans, Farm near Lake Naivasha, Kenya

Lake Naivasha in Kenya is home to fishermen, teaming wildlife and supports a thriving nearby town of the same name. It’s surrounded by farms. These range from huge, international flower-growing business with an international market to smaller, familial concerns. Whilst driving to a Masai village we saw Evans in a field, tending to his crop. We pulled over, and he was kind enough to talk to us. Evans is a student at the local university studying agronomy and was working part time to help fund his education. He tells us here how mobile access is changing the way he studies and allowing him to connect with his friends and colleagues, as well as making him feel safer.

Rachel, from a remote rural community near Morogoro, Tanzania

Lying outside Morogoro, close to the building of a vast new road, lies a small village. In its compass is a leper hospital. The nurses who offer administer palliative care to its patients are not well paid. In a scheme designed to enable them to supplement their income, each nurse is provided with a strip of land to farm and access to an agricultural advisor. In a move to bolster harvest even further, Tigo, in partnership with Technoserve, are beta-trialling an agricultural advice service called m-Kilimo (‘farmer’) which aims to provide the farmers with agronomy information, market prices and help with selecting and buying pesticides and fungicides through their mobiles. We meet some of female farmers and carers on their land and ask them to tell us how mobile, and access to information via it, is helping to transform and benefit their lives. Rachel, 43, explains how it works.

Boniface, From Masai Market, Nairobi, Kenya

In the Masai Market of Nairobi, craftsmen and stallholders convene from the surrounding countryside to sell their wares. The market itself is itinerant and has moved home frequently. Vendors and entrepreneurs whom we meet tell us that this movement was having a deleterious effect on their trade. We speak to Boniface, who explains how he’s using his mobile phone to keep in contact with his customers. Now, they know where he is and what he’s selling. He’s even using M-Pesa to pay his suppliers when traditional, old-style transactions are impossible.

Regan From Kibera Slum, Nairobi, Kenya

On June 4^th, 2012, Mobile for Development was shown round Kibera, East Africa’s largest slum, by the Kibera News Network, a volunteer body of citizen journalists who report on the fast moving daily news stories that course through life there. No one knows the size of Kibera’s population; it’s transitory and estimates go up to 600,000 people. In Kibera, we met Regan, a young man who typifies how quickly Kenyan youth is embracing the mobile phone and the potential it represents. Soon, those even younger than Regan will access the internet for the first time in their lives via their mobile.

Plugging the information gap: The Need for Mobile agri VAS

Usually, the brokers come to Shula’s field to look over her crops of rice, maize or tomatoes. Sometimes they offer her a price for them. Sometimes they don’t. Shula is now 35, moved to Mvomero district as a child, and has built a life here ever since. Her husband has a job elsewhere which means that she’s dealing with the decisions that come with running a farm largely alone. They try, where possible, to make joint ones about which crop to grow and how to counter the effects of pests, disease and Tanzania’s notoriously mercurial weather.

When a crop comes to fruition, Shula’s ability to find a competitive price for it is critical. At the moment she either takes or leaves the broker’s offer or goes to the local market in person to see what others are doing. She tells us that she really needs information on what’s happening at other nearby markets . At the moment, travelling to them to find out eats into her slim margins. Knowledge about local pricing would enable her to haggle much more effectively with the brokers.

When we ask her what else she needs she says “Agronomy advice – how to get the best products to the customer”. At the moment, if pests or disease attack, her only recourse for help is the agricultural extension worker, who is spread very thinly over his parish of farming groups. We ask her if she’d trust farming information sent to her via a mobile; after all, this would have direct impact on her livelihood. She says that she would be both thankful for and act upon any helpful information provided to her, adding “I know that there will be more information than I am able to get through the extension officer”.

She has had her mobile for seven years and it has quickly become a vital part of her small business. If a service is useful, Shula and her family are quick to take it. She uses voice calls and texts to let regular customers know when the harvest is ready and she also uses Tigo’s Pesa service for business. “Sometimes, when the traders come, they have no cash, and they pay me by Pesa”, she explains. Even the school fees for her three children, nowadays, are taken care of via her mobile phone.

Moses, Masai Village, Hell’s Gate National Park, Kenya

In June 2012, Mobile for Development travelled to Kenya to meet the Masai Villagers of Hell’s Gate National Park near Lake Naivasha in Kenya. The Masai are pastoralists, farming sheep, chicken and cows and selling both primary and secondary products as their primary source of income. Only recently has mobile penetration reached these remote farmers. Here, Moses, a Cultural Promoter for the Masai explains to us how the villagers have come to adopt mobile and how it has changed their lives.

Sophia, Masai Village, Hell’s Gate National Park, Kenya

In June 2012, Mobile for Development travelled to Kenya to meet the Masai Villagers of Hell’s Gate National Park near Lake Naivasha in Kenya. The Masai are pastoralists, farming sheep, chicken and cows and selling both primary and secondary products as their primary source of income. Only recently has mobile penetration reached these remote farmers. Here, we speak to Sophia, a young mother, who explains how she benefits from using mobile to beneficially impact her business, solve health issues in the village and increase safety.

Lucy, 42, from Njoro, Kenya

“One cold morning, I noticed black spots on the beans and potatoes in my shamba. The following day, I called m-Kilimo. The expert on the line explained that the condition was as a result of fungus infestation, which was being aggravated by the cold weather and frost. The expert advised on the fungicide to spray the crops with. I bought the fungicide and sprayed my beans and potatoes.

My crops were saved and now with the help of m-Kilimo, I know what to do next season and they are only a phone call away. Today, my vegetables are doing well. I plan to sell the surplus vegetables and save to buy two cows for my farm next year.”

About M-Kilimo

In 2009, the Mobile for Development’s mAgri Programme, supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, set up a farmer helpline, M-Kilimo, in Kenya. M-Kilimo had at its heart three aims:

• To set up a fully functioning helpline that provided high quality information services to smallholder farmers
• To understand the information needs of farmers
• To test the commercial viability of a sustainable Agri VAS deployment

The pilot was designed as a voice-based service where farmers spoke with helpline experts who dealt with any agricultural query raised by the user. Here, Lucy, from Njoro, explains how using the service helped her to save her crop of beans and potatoes, sell the surplus and reinvest the profits back into her farm.