Good communication is vital to small farmers who need better access to markets and to reliable information about prices, product quality and market conditions. Can new information and communication technologies (ICTs), especially the Internet, help? The First Mile is a two-year pilot project supported by the Government of Switzerland. It is implemented in collaboration with the Agricultural Marketing Systems Development Programme of the Government of the United Republic of Tanzania. Technical assistance is being provided by the International Support Group.
The First Mile project
Juliana Raphael Kulaya, 45, lives in the village of Shirin Joro, close to Mt Kilimanjaro in the highlands of northern Tanzania. Her six children study and work far from home, and her husband moved away some years ago, leaving Kulaya alone to work her half hectare farm.
Kulaya is poor, but with the income earned by selling her produce at Mbuyuni market in the nearby town of Moshe, she has managed to build a modest home. Kulaya has no phone or television and says she has no time to listen to her radio. When she needs information, she has no idea where to go, and she hasnt seen agricultural extension personnel in years. When she goes to market she has no information about prices and no idea where to find it, so she sells for whatever price she can get.
Magdalena Lema, a 55-year-old schoolteacher whose four children are university educated lives in the neighbourhood. Lema and her husband have a 10 hectare farm where they grow food crops and raise dairy cattle. Each member of the family owns a mobile phone and their home computer is connected to the Internet. Despite her relative wealth, Lema has a problem similar to her neighbours she has no idea where to go or who to speak with to get agricultural and market information.
I would use my mobile phone to call someone for market information, she said. If I knew who to call.
Kulaya and Lema are just two of the farmers who stand to benefit from IFADs First Mile Project, now underway in several districts of Tanzania. The pilot project is helping small producers, processors, traders and others in the market chain communicate better, form partnerships and learn from each other so they can have better access to market information and negotiate fairer and more collaborative market relationships.
The term first mile" refers to bridging the connectivity gap that separates a village with no electricity and no telephone line from the nearest online computer. It emphasizes rural communities as the starting point of connectivity, not the end point.
Linked to the IFAD-supported Agricultural Marketing Systems Development Programme, the First Mile is tackling two challenges: access by rural poor people to information and knowledge and to communication technologies such as mobile phones, the Internet and email; and their access to other key people in the market chain, including traders, processors and even consumers. As the project leader, Clive Lightfoot, says: The project brings the communication and the marketing dimensions together. Marketing has a tight connection to immediate income and is very dependent on information: not just price information, but also market intelligence, such as information about product quality and what is coming into the market. It is very information-intense. Weve coupled that with the potential to make an income, and that is what is driving the project.
The immediate challenge for the First Mile during the two-year pilot project is to work out how small farmers can connect through intermediaries to the Internet to get market information and to communicate with other farmer groups, with groups of processors and traders, and directly with consumers as they build their own producer-to-consumer market chains.
During Phase One of the project, from May to July 2005, current access by local people to ICTs was assessed, and their interest in working together to learn about market chains was explored. Small farmers, processors and traders who attended an initial workshop, held in Arusha, Tanzania in early June, together explored the challenges they face in marketing and realized that none of them fully appreciated the problems faced by others in the market chain. They showed a strong interest in working together and agreed that they would all gain from more cooperation along the market chain. Learning groups were formed that will eventually use technologies like email and the Internet to share information, experience and learning.
A second workshop trained 28 people in development of market chains and in how to support local learning as a way to improve market linkages. Their role is now to respond to demand and train others locally in the same skills.
During Phase Two, which runs until December 2005, some learning group members will be trained in how to use an Internet-based learning support service, Linking Local Learners, accessible at link learners. In part, their role will be to help ensure that the learning groups are able to use the service, either directly or through intermediaries. Assessments in December and early in 2006 will determine the level of local interest in and action taken towards building market chains, forming learning groups and using ICTs to support learning.
IFADs country programme manager for Tanzania, Ides de Willebois, stresses the importance of local commitment to the First Mile process. This must be on a demand basis, de Willebois says. If the learning groups find value in the exchange of information and knowledge and express an interest in continuing, then the project will respond. There is a change in behaviour that is needed if small farmers, processors and traders are going to form partnerships to work and learn together, rather than compete with each other, as is now the case. We are hopeful that the First Mile will help bring about that change.
A learning and sharing initiative
Working with the Eastern and Southern Africa Division, IFADs Communication Division is documenting, through photography, video and text, the learning and change that takes place during the life of the First Mile Project.
Using a thematic approach to capture the pre-existing conditions, processes, outcomes and lessons learned throughout the project, the Communication Division will prepare project reports to support knowledge and information sharing in IFAD, and with partners including the Tanzanian Government, IFAD projects in Tanzania and in other countries as appropriate, donors, and others.
Contacts
Ides de Willebois
Country programme manager, Tanzania
IFAD
E-mail:
i.dewillebois@ifad.org
Nathaniel Katinila
Coordinator, Agricultural Marketing Systems Development Programme
E-mail:
amsdp@cybernet.co.tz
Links
First Mile Project
http://www.firstmiletanzania.net/
Linking Local Learners
http://www.linkinglearners.net/
IFAD in Tanzania
http://www.ifad.org//english/operations/pf/tza/index.htm
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