The Farmers Internet Café, hosted by the Kabwe Farmers Association was established by the Zambia National Farmers Union (ZNFU), through support from United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the USAs department of Agriculture through the Education Development and Democracy Initiative (EDDI) programme.
The basis of these projects was to link the mother body with affiliates at district level while at the same time providing access to information to individual union members.With the two pilot projects, farmers are able to know who is selling and who the potential buyer is. They are able to know were the buyers are and at what price on the market.
Apart from accessing business opportunities, the farmers were able to know general marketing trends in the agricultural sector, they were able to write letters to their relatives as well as enquire about any other services that the union or any other organisation of interest to them was offering.
Though the Internet is new and most of the information available was coming from the developed world, much of it is complicated and not relevant to the local situation, there were countries that were emerging like India that are able to provide information at small-scale level.
To operate profitably farmers pay K500 per minute for using the Internet. The public is also allowed to use it at the same rate. The Café in Kabwe is able to generate over K3 million per week.
A survey conducted prior to the establishment of the Internet Cafés in Monze and Kabwe by the ZNFU among farmers revealed that, though the technology was unfamiliar to most farmers particularly women and girls, they were ready to embrace the technology as long as it was able to address problems such as sources of inputs and markets for the produce.
One of the lessons learnt from the project was that farmers were receptive to the technology, as long as the benefit was explained to them. The results of the free 18 months project also showed that while the Internet communication technology has been in Zambia since 1994, farmers especially small scale ones have had no opportunity to it.
However one key issue that needs to be recognised to ensure the success and sustainability of such projects is that the internet must be reliable, as any forms of interruption will discourage regulars and would-be users. In the absence of reliable sources of power, alternative means like establishment of solar panelled computer systems would be ideal, and this would in turn help rural communities where electricity is unavailable.
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