SMART ICT FOR WEATHER AND WATER INFORMATION AND ADVICE

FOR SMALLHOLDERS IN AFRICA

Bharat Sharma and Giriraj Amarnath

CHALLENGE

Mobile Phones in Africa

Bring smart and affordable ICT to everyday farm management for smallholders – to help boost sustainable agricultural production in Africa

THE CONCEPT• Develop online database for all registered farm fields in projects sites, around 60

fields in each site

• Use high-resolution RS data to monitor the condition of crops in a farmer’s field

• Convert this info into simple, regular agro-advice delivered to farmers through SMS

• Help optimize farm profits by providing water and other inputs at the right place, time and quantity

OUTPUTS - OVERVIEW

Mobile-phone and web-based information and agro-advisory system developed and tested in pilot areas in Sudan, Ethiopia and Egypt

Capacity developed and institutional partnership across various decision makers are strengthened

3 Training manuals; 5 conference proceedings (including ICT4D (Ghana), ICT4Ag (Rwanda)); 2 articles (in review)

OUTPUTS –Crop Biomass Monitoring

ET, biomass production and related parameters are regularly calculated for project areas in 3 countries based on high-resolution 20m RS images

Gash Delta, Sudan, 21-11-2012

Raw data Derived Daily ET Biomass production

OUTPUTS – Flooding Monitoring

• Only for Sudan; Two flood seasons to date – 2012 and 2013

• Disaster management angle – will Kassala town be affected?

• Water use efficiency angle – do farmers use diverted water for spate irrigation?

Gash Delta, Sudan

OUTPUTS - Web Portal and SMS Service

FieldLook portal www.fieldlook.com - in English, Arabic and Oromiffaa

Fieldlook spatial data are “translated” into simple SMSs - both qualitative and quantitative and both on-demand with weekly “push”

SMS services match desired information, farmer skills and language; they are consistently revised according to user feedback

Biomass production for 21-27 March, 2013 at the field of the maize farmer Ibrahem Abdel-Halim Hasanen, Egypt

OUTPUTS - Capacity building and outreach, Sudan

Training on ICT tools and applications Field visit with Minister of Agriculture

Media briefing

Newspaper highlights

Mobile phones distribution by the Minister

PARTNERS

MoWR, Sudan, through their field and research offices (Hydraulic Research Station, Wad Medani) – supported project activities - capacity building, system operations and dissemination; Gash River Training Unit- ensuring participation of farmers and farmer organizations and the development departments

Local office of the IFAD - experience sharing and taking the recommendations to policy planners

eLeaf, the Netherlands - development of ICT tools

DLV Plant – advice to farmers on maintaining soil moisture, best practices on crop rotation etc.

OUTCOME

Operational service (proof of concept) that provides agro-advisory to farmers based on hi-tech work – in Sudan, Ethiopia and Egypt

Information service on flash floods in the Gash region in Sudan is now about to be used operationally - for flood management relief and for spate irrigation distribution – by:• Ministry of Water Resources, GoS• State Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, Gash Region• Farmer Organizations

LESSONS AND NEXT STEPS

Design the project and all its activities in close collaboration with the final users and ensure all their concerns are adequately addressed

Improve capacity of the stakeholders, especially in case of new technologies/services, to a level that they remain sustainable once the project completes its term

The project area in Sudan on the Eritrea-Sudan border - very challenging geography and political environment

High cost of the satellite data but new satellites like 10m ESA Sentinel from 2014 help improve the availability of free high-resolution images

Yasir Mohammed (Director- HRS, Sudan)

“We appreciate the working relation we had with IMWI, eLeaf, DLV, and the support from IFAD. We remain very much interested to carry the project forward, and up-scale to other new areas.”

New areas – Gezira Irrigation scheme in Sudan, Tanzania, Nigeria Longer-term – limited only by the number of mobile phones in farming

communities, which is hundreds of millions in Africa

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jul/24/mobile-phones-africa-microfinance-farming

Thank You !