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IMARK Expert consultation on Mobile Services for Development

Laureene Reeves Ndagire

Mobile applications (m-apps) in particular for agriculture and rural development, hold significant potential for advancing development, and could provide the most affordable ways for communities of people to  access information, markets, finance, and governance systems previously unavailable to them.

In response to this development within the industry, CTA, FAO and collaborating partners of the Information Management Resource Kit (IMARK) group organised an Expert Consultation on mobile services for development held at Reehorst Hotel, Ede – Wageningen. The main purpose was to devise a curriculum on Mobile Services for Development for organizations in developing countries with the necessary tools and methodologies required to maximize the potential of mobile technologies in making their work more effective.

The consultation brought together experts working in mobile for development and partnering with development agencies, donors, NGOs, communication networks, rural institutions and the academic community. The IMARK group makes e-learning resources freely available at www.imarkgroup.org

The learning curriculum on Mobile Services for Development aims to provide organizations in developing countries and those working in the field of development with the necessary tools and methodologies required to maximise the potential of mobile technologies in making their work more effective.  The learning curriculum will provide knowledge and the tools to  the target audiences, that will help to create the environment and the conditions for ‘mobile services in development’.

The Expert Consultation was a critical step in the development of the curriculum, as it brought together experts and institutional representatives involved with the management of mobile services. The group reviewed and revised as appropriate a proposed curriculum, and considered which organizations or individuals could best assist in the development of learning materials for the curriculum.

The expected outcomes of the workshop  being:

1) agreement on a revised curriculum outline;
2) identified sources of existing training materials, methodologies and software tools relevant to the curriculum;
3) statements of intent from institutions and individuals wishing to participate in developing the curriculum; and
4) the identification of subject experts to provide content.

Participants shared their own experience from the field and identified key challenges and strategic areas for mobile support to agriculture and rural development. At the start of the conference, participants identified a wide range of stakeholders within the target audience for the course,  their challenges, needs and possible solutions in terms of understanding and awareness in order to achieve their tasks.
The target audience were narrowed down to 3 groups; developers and entrepreneurs, project formulators and implementers, and policy makers/planners and strategists in public and private sectors. The consultation then moved on to identifying the required knowledge needs, skills and attitude for each target audience. And once these had been identified, we discussed potential resources, methodologies and authors for the course.

During the workshop, participants also presented case studies sharing past and present experiences on applying mobile services to development in their work. Some of the themes arising from this session were based around addressing the gender issue when implementing a project in M4D (mobile for development), how to establish and maintain sustainable partnerships with mobile operators, and once m-apps have been rolled out to the community, how stakeholders can be motivated to use them and encourage core groups to get involved in the projects.

Some of the case studies by participants at the conference :

1.    Literacy Bridge produces a simple and durable audio device called the “Talking Book” designed specifically for learning needs of people in oral cultures. Its aim is to enable people in the poorest communities to learn what they need, when they need it, and wherever they need it – on – demand even when in a village without electricity. Its goal is to improve the target audience’s attitudes, knowledge and behaviors for 20 behavior change objectives.
2.    Djantoli mHealth service ; Djantoli develops a comprehensive health service for children under 5 that aims to facilitate early resort to care. It is founded on the frequent monitoring of simple health indicators and the provision of a simple and affordable insurance system.  Presently, around 1000 children are followed through the service.
The main process covered by Djantoli though the IT tool can be described in the few following steps:
–    at home or at work, where families are, agents collect key health indicators
–    data are securely transferred to a database, and analyzed to identify children at risk,
–    doctors at the local health center review the data and history of those children, and may summon them,
–    the agents is notified and will indicate to the mother that she needs to bring her child to the health center
3.    Farmerline is a technology product company that builds supply chain and value chain solutions to integrate agricultural outputs of rural farmers in Ghana. It is a service specifically focused on smallholder farmers and organizations that need more access to resources. Through voice technology, they link farmers to markets, finance, weather forecast, new farming tips, inputs dealers and equipment services in local languages. Farmerline in partnership with MEDA is currently working with 4,000 female farmers through 200 lead farmers and educating them in soybean cultivation, nutrition, production and processing, and also links them with financial services and appropriate markets.

Through sharing case studies, we were able to identify some of the key competencies and skills each participant presented to the overall realization of the curriculum, learning practices and innovative applications of M4D to ARD, and potential partner organisations able to implement and support priority M4D programmes.

In conclusion, the workshop brought to light some of the existing opportunities and target audiences for this and future IMARK e-learning courses, for upgrading and up –scaling activities and services currently on offer. We realized the need to identify measures for the integration of mobile4dev in national ARD policies, and the enhancement of the capacity of institutions, communities and other stakeholders. And that while the course will be available online ,we need to consider the possibility of a face-to-face delivery, as research shows that in some cases, this method of content delivery can be more effective than online, especially considering the number of people in ACP countries who are still living off grid.