Photo Credit: OpenIdeo

Let’s imagine the state of the global food security in the next 3-5 years, if rural women decide to back out of agriculture and food production today? Secondly, let’s visualize how access to information and communication technologies (ICTs) by rural women could reverse the negative impacts that this could make on the globe – that is the magic!

Rural women in most of the developing world play an indispensable role in improving the quality of life through agriculture, food production, processing and decisions concerning nutrition and diet. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture  Organization (FAO), over two thirds of all women in Africa are employed in the agriculture sector and produce nearly 90% of food on the continent. As the world recognizes the importance of rural women on the International Day of Rural Women (2011), I would like to highlight some of the key roles that rural women play across the globe in sustaining life. The piece concludes with the ‘envisioning’ of ICTs to improve the current deplorable conditions of these rural women. While each of these cases highlights the “role” of rural women in agriculture, they also inform the public (in general) and our policy makers (in particular) about the plight of this hardworking social group within our society.

In Bangladesh, rural women are known for their traditional role in a wide range of agricultural activities including post-harvesting, cow fattening and milking, goat farming, backyard poultry rearing, horticulture, and food processing. Women, almost equal to the contribution of male family labor, carry out some 40-50% of field irrigation and non-farm water management.

Depending on the geographic location in Bhutan, rural women may dominate agricultural production. The population consists of 49% women, and 62% of them work in agriculture. Agriculture remains the primary economic activity in the rural areas of Bhutan in addition to other dominant activities as kitchen garden and livestock. Women considerably contribute to household income through farm and non-farm activities.

The situation is not different in India where the national rural female work participation rate is around 22%. While agriculture is a household enterprise, social norms demarcate the division of labor based on sex and age. Activities like transplanting and weeding are regarded as women’s jobs, whereas both men and women perform activities like harvesting and post-harvesting.

About 79% of Kenya’s population lives in rural areas and relies on agriculture for most of its income. The rural economy depends mainly on smallholder subsistence agriculture, which produces 75% of total agricultural output. The poorest communities are found in the sparsely populated arid zones, mainly in the north and made up of households headed by women, herders, and farm laborers. Subsistence farming is primary – and often the only – source of livelihood for about 70% of these women.

In Rwanda, women account for about 54% of the population, and many households are headed by women and orphans. Agriculture remains the backbone of the economy contributing an average of 36% of total GDP, and employs more than 80% of the population. Rural livelihoods are based on agricultural production system that is characterized by small family farms, practicing mixed farming that combines rain-fed grain crops, traditional livestock rearing and some vegetable production and dominated by women.

A substantial proportion of Nepalese women (40%) are economically active. Most of these women are employed in the agriculture sector, the majority working as unpaid family laborers in subsistence agriculture characterized by low technology and primitive farming practices. As men increasingly move out of farming, agriculture is becoming increasingly feminized in Nepal.

In Pakistan, women are key players in the agriculture sector, which employs almost 12 million women in the production of crops, vegetables and livestock. The cotton crop, accounting for half of national export earnings, depends heavily on female labor. Women have the exclusive responsibility for cotton picking, exposing themselves in the process to health hazards emanating from the intensive use of pesticides.

In Sri Lanka, about 80% of the population lives in rural areas in which women play an important role in the agriculture sector. About 42% of the female labor force is engaged in agricultural activities. Gender roles in slash and burn cultivation, rice paddies and home gardens vary according to the cultivation practiced in these systems of production. Women take on activities related to transplanting, post-harvesting and household level processing of home garden produce.

The agriculture sector of Ghana contributes about 33.5% of GDP and remains the country’s major engine of economic growth. Over half the country’s population lives in rural areas. About six in ten small-scale farmers are poor, and many are women. Women bear heavy workloads. In addition to their domestic chores, they are responsible for about 60% of agricultural production. More than half the women who head households in rural areas are among the poorest 20% of the population.

In Côte d’Ivoire, most of the country’s poor people are small-scale farmers. They face problems of market access, low prices for export crops and inadequate basic social services. Rural women, who lead the sector, have limited or no decision-making power over the allocation of land, and they are dependent on men for access to land. Yet gaining access to land is crucial for these women because their livelihoods depend largely on the production of food crops.

In Indonesia, women represent the mainstay of rural households, providing family as well as farm labor. Agriculture accounts for the highest share of rural employment. Since most rural households control small amounts of land or have no land at all, rural women often seek to supplement household income and food security through off-farm employment in small and medium enterprises, some of which have links to agricultural production.

The East African country of Ethiopia, has about 12.7 million smallholders who produce about 95% of agricultural GDP under extremely vulnerable conditions such as drought and other natural disasters. Households headed by women are particularly vulnerable. Women are much less likely than men to receive an education or health benefits, or to have a voice in decisions affecting their lives.

Poverty in the Sudan is deeply entrenched and is largely rural. Poverty particularly affects farmers who practice rain-fed agriculture. It is more widespread and deeper in rural areas dominated by women and children and in areas affected by conflict, drought and famine. In general, small-scale farmers and herders in the traditional rain-fed farming and livestock sectors are poorer than those in the irrigated agricultural sector.

Tanzania has about 85% of its poor people living in rural areas and relies on agriculture as their main source of income and livelihood. Within the agriculture sector, food crop producers who are mainly women, are generally poorer than cash crop farmers, but both operate under cyclical and structural constraints and are subject to frequent natural calamities.

Despite all these contributions of women to agricultural sector under the aforementioned harsh conditions, their role has tended to be seen as secondary to that of men. Unfortunately, the opportunities offered by ICTs in the digital age, are not immediately available to the poorest of the poor – who are mostly ‘rural’ women. Rural women in most developing countries face important constraints with respect to ICTs. Some of these include the limited time availability to participate in training and use of ICTs due to the nature of their role at home, low literacy level, minimal access to technology such as mobile telephones or computers, and social and cultural stigma that goes with the social group.

Notwithstanding, there is an increasing body of evidence that shows how ICT is contributing positively to women’s socio-economic empowerment. A range of ICT models have been used to support the empowerment of women all over the world and there is evidence to show that ICTs have improved women’s access to information, and provided them with new employment opportunities.

While the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that giving women the same access as men to ‘agricultural resources’ could increase their farm production by 20-30%, I would like to state that giving women same access as men to “ICTs” could increase their farm productivity by 20-30%.

The shea nut industry has come a long way since I was a Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa from 2006-2008. In fact, despite researching ICT4D initiatives on a daily basis, I was still baffled when I read the Economist article about a shea project in northern Ghana that provides personalized barcodes for women to stick to shea nuts sacks as they sell them to buyers.

Photo credit: The Economist

It’s one thing to read or listen to others talk about the use of mobiles to improve maternal health or apps that help grain buyers manage transactions from small-scale farmers in the developing world. It’s another to really consider the impact that various ICTs are having on the people of an area where one has lived or worked before.

Shea, a product that grows on trees as a fruit and whose nut is pounded into butter to be used for cooking, confectionary, and cosmetics, has long been referred to as “women’s gold.” That’s because traditionally women are the primary ones to gather the fruit from the ground after it has ripened and fallen. The nuts grow only in the semi-arid zone of sub-Saharan Africa from the Gambia to Uganda. Because of the rare properties of shea, the worldwide demand for the product worldwide has grown, some sources estimating that 150,000 tons of dry kernels are exported every year from Africa. Various non-profits, NGOs and aid agencies have taken advantage of the large shea demand to create projects that empower women by increasing their income and providing access to markets.

When I volunteered in Mali, shea production was hot on the development agenda. USAID was supporting shea projects through its Small Project Assistance grants, as well as organizing trainings on improved shea production methods through the West Africa Trade Hub. Since shea trees were abundant in my rural site of Kamona, I was able to work extensively with the women on shea projects; we formed a cooperative, acquired solar shea nut dryers and connected with nut buyers.

Walking with shea producer in Kamona, Mali

For our shea projects, contacting buyers on cell phones was about as far as ICT use went. Records of the sacks that women brought were kept in torn notebooks using barely-working pens. If someone told me then that cell phones (what’s a “smart” phone?) would be used to keep track of the weight, price, and quality of nuts and sacks, I would not have believed it. Then again, volunteers who had been in Mali just a couple years before me never had access to mobile phones and were envious when us newbies could keep in touch with our families in America on a daily basis if we wanted.

Women in Kamona, Mali, making soap using shea butter

The project in Ghana is being implemented by the German company SAP alongside the NGO PlaNet Finance and is both a social and business investment. A smartphone scans the barcode on the shea nut sack during delivery and talks to a server in Germany, tracking each bag as it is weighed and loaded onto a lorry. Another part of the project has had the women form a federation called the Star Shea Network, which allows the women to offer a reliable supply of nuts and gain bargaining power with buyers. The women have also received training on nut quality improvement and how to act on market price information received through mobile phones. Eventually, SAP hopes that the women will be able to pay for the services with their increased income rather than relying on grants to sustain the project.

ICTs have been used to improve the work of shea producers in other ways, such as creating a directory of shea butter buyers, and marketing shea products through picture and videos. Though the smartphone project is nascent and is not yet being implemented elsewhere to the best of my knowledge, I cannot help but wonder if similar initiatives will reach the shea nut collectors in Kamona.

Photo Credit: Africa News

I remember vividly carrying bundles of millions of Cedis (Ghanaian Currency) in my car about 9-10 years ago, and driving from Tamale (the Regional Capital) to the remote rural communities to pay local farmers for their seed cotton during marketing. You can imagine all the risks involved in carrying such a huge sum of money across districts with no security – the danger of being attacked by armed robbers, the chance of loosing the money, the risk involved in counting and paying individual farmers accordingly without over or under-payment, the challenge with safe handling of these money by the local farmers themselves, the temptation of overspending the money by the rural farmers immediately after receiving their payments, and the risk associated with “banking” the money in their thatched houses.

Don’t forget about my earlier view of a typical ‘rural’ community – lack of basic social facilities such as credit union or banks. I saw my own mother ‘banking’ her money in some special plastic bags and hiding it from us (the children) and later discovering that the value of the money has depreciated such that she could not use it – don’t forget about the skyrocketing inflation rates in Ghana in the mid-late 80’ after the military coup. I also remember interesting stories of my cotton farmers about ‘banking’ their money in the home under mattresses and being discovered by their children; hidden in a pots and being destroyed by red ants and other insects; buried in the ground and forgotten or swept away by a flood; kept under the roof of their building and being destroyed by fire, among others.

Basically, rural women who are mainly farmers, have the challenge of banking or storing the money they obtain at the end of the farming season safely and inaccessible from others as well as from themselves. These rural women also at some point of their life, need to either send some of this income to their relatives outside their village or receive money from their children in the cities. This ability of transferring money to others, or location-shift one’s own money is also an issue. It is also important for the rural women to have sufficient money (or credit) available in the right format or currency when it is required, especially at the start of a new farming season or the beginning of school year where they have to spend on their kids. Finally, the challenge of actually making saving for future use and for purchases of more expensive farm equipments cannot be ignored.

How did the story change with Mobile Money Services?

Mobile money service is seen as one of the world’s fastest growing industries, following the success of the growth of the ‘mobile’ industry over the past two decades where billions of transactions are done using mobile devices. With leadership from M-PESA in Kenya, innovative mobile payment solutions that enable customers to complete simple financial transactions including person-to-person money transfer have been emerging and transforming rural lives. Mobile money services has its presence already in Ghana, Ivory Coast, Benin, Cameroon, Guinea Bissau, Swaziland, Uganda, Zimbabwe, South Africa in addition to Kenya with Liberia being one of the newest countries across Africa to adopt this innovation.

Rural women all over the world are now using mobile money services to facilitate their work. When asked about the mobile money service being provided to her by Lonestar Cell MTN and Ecobank Liberia Limited, a market woman has this to say:

“In trying out the Mobile Money service, I have been able to send money to my son in Buchanan to pay his fees at the Grand Bassa Community College where he is a student and not worry whether the money I sent would reach him. I found the service very effective, convenient and affordable. Clearly, this is better than any other money transfer service I have ever used” (Woman from Liberian Rural Community).

Within the mobile health sector, the application of mobile money service is seen in the use of Medical Smart Cards that allow people who have no access to medical plans or insurance cover to save money through the use of M-PESA transfers. Savings are used to pay for primary health care, specified laboratory tests and drugs at pre-contracted prices. A combination of mobile banking, public information, and free treatment are used in Kenya to give women access to fistula repair. Women can call a free hotline, and if money is needed for transport to a fistula unit this is transferred via M-PESA. Using mobile money services make treatment a reality for women who otherwise would not have been in the socio-economic position to get an operation.

A study conducted on the use of mobile money services in “Kenya Case Study: Who Is Using Mobile Money?” shows that slightly more than half of the mobile money market (56%) live in rural areas and 51% of the users of mobile money services are women. Another study conducted in Kenya in 2009 about the impact of mobile money on the rural people revealed that M-PESA is boosting their income through cheaper, more accessible, and safer money transfer options. The research also shows M-PESA is empowering rural women because it makes it easier for them to solicit and receive money from their husbands and other contacts in Kenyan cities. Remittances through M-PESA relieve many women in rural areas of the burden of traveling by bus to cities to receive money from their husbands, a process that for some could take as long as one week. Also the M-PESA mobile money transfer system is used in Tanzania for example to pay for the transport of women suffering from fistula, children with cleft palates and other disabilities.

The potential of mobile money in the Ghanaian market is so huge with an estimated 80% of Ghanaian being “unbanked” – meaning they conduct their transactions outside the banking sector with no access to financial services. Mobile money is reducing the transaction costs of financial services for Ghanaian in rural areas, saving the cost of travel and time spent visiting the nearest town to access financial services, providing people with a way to transfer money safely and keep (or even increase) their savings.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the USAID-funded project in Haiti, Integrated Finance for Value Chains and Enterprises (HIFIVE) announced the launch of the Haiti Mobile Money Initiative (HMMI) to stimulate the development of mobile money services in Haiti in 2010. The following two stories show the outcome of this project:

In a cybercafé in downtown Port-au-Prince, Jean Yves deposits money into his TchoTcho Mobile account. Michel, his brother who owns the business, recommended that he register for this mobile money service so that he doesn’t have to carry money across town and risk being robbed. Taking his brother’s ad-vice, Jean Yves deposits cash at the cybercafé and withdraws it via his phone when he arrives at his final destination.

One hour away in the busy port town of Saint Marc, Carmen receives a text message saying that Mercy Corps has deposited US$40 of food aid into her T-Cash account. She picks up her bag and heads off to her local merchant to purchase rice and beans using her phone.

The USAID’s Fostering Agriculture Competitiveness Employing Information Communication Technologies (FACET) project which helps USAID missions and their implementing partners in sub-Saharan Africa to use information and communications technology (ICT) more successfully — via sustainable and scalable approaches — to improve the impact of their agriculture related development projects including Feed the Future projects, shares its experience with the use of mobile money in agriculture in “Using Mobile Money, Mobile Banking to Enhance Agriculture in Africa”. Also with the setting up of the mFarmer Initiative Fund, there is the hope that more rural women will have access to mobile phones and be able to utilize mobile money services to improve their lives.

A recent report “Mobile Money Transfers & Remittances: Markets, Forecasts & Vendor Strategies 2011-2015” by Juniper Research predicts active users of mobile money services to double in the next two years, exceeding 200 million worldwide by 2013. The principle behind mobile services including mobile phones and mobile banking with the structural support from information communication technologies is something that has come to change lives in rural communities in particular. Mobile money services have come to stay. Different models, applications, and innovations will evolve over the years for simplicity, ease of use, less costly, and more compatible to a variety of mobile devices across the developing world.

Last Friday, QED Group, LLC hosted “Tourism as a Sustainable Development Strategy: A Systemic Value Chain Approach,” a breakfast seminar. Discussions focused on best practices in tourism management and how these tools can be implemented in projects to maximize positive impacts.

Amanda MacArthur, Director of Operations at CDC Development Solutions (CDS) and speaker at the seminar, offered an overview of the Tourism Employment and Opportunity (TEMPO), a USAID funded program implemented in Nigeria’s Cross River State.

Tourism e-Marketing and promotion strategy

MacArthur highlighted the Ambassador Promotion Program as a successful tourism e-marketing and promotion strategy.

Essentially, CDS staff work with local stakeholders to develop a program over a specific period of time where they provide resources, deep discounts, activities, packaged promotions to people who are willing to be first adopters of the location.

“Facebook integration wristbands”

Ushuaia Beach Hotel in Ibiza launched in July their Facebook sharing initiative—a first in the hotel industry. Hotel guests are given the option of wearing a slim wristband synchronized to their Facebook profile.

Guests can swipe their wristbands across a sensor at designated kiosk, checking in to various places in the resort, updating their status and tagging themselves in as many pictures as they like to post online.

Last year, Coca-Cola pioneered a similar technology in Israel. In the summer, the Coca-Cola Village invites 600 to 800 teenagers for a three-day stay in a multimedia village to enjoy fun activities such as sports, swimming and horse-riding.

Through the Like Machine, conceptualized by Enon Landenberg, joint-CEO of Publicis E-dologic, the inhabitants of the village were able to use their wristbands to register that they “liked” a certain activity, and a Facebook message would automatically appear on his or her wall stating that he or she “liked” the pool at the village, for instance.

The event was so popular that according to E-dologic joint-CEO Doron Tal, 250, 000 people claimed to have been there—even though only 8,000 had the opportunity to experience it in real life.

“They felt that they had been there because they could enjoy it through their friends by following their fun on Facebook,” Mr. Tal Said.

Background on TEMPO

TEMPO’s ultimate goal is to build a destination tourism sector—leading to jobs creation and economic growth for local and regional communities.  To accomplish this goal, CDS established (or provided) capacity building to private sector led public-private Destination Management Organizations (DMOs).

In particular, CDS built DMO’s ability to use technology to promote and sell tourism in the destination by creating a web-portal that provides information about Cross River State tourist spots, training in content development and collection to enable tourism operators to market their services based on customer needs, and making booking and payments available online.

Why Tourism for Development?

Presenter Kristin Lamoureux, Director of International Institute of Tourism Studies at George Washington University representing the Save Travel Alliance a member of the Volunteers for Economic Growth Alliance (VEGA) at the seminar, stressed the importance of the tourism sector in developing countries.

Tourism is the top five export category for 83% of developing countries—and for 38% of those it is the most relevant economic activity, said Lamoureux.

Also, the benefit of tourism is that resources—cultural and natural—are already available in developing counties. Most importantly, many tourists’ activities are found in rural areas and this creates opportunities for sustainable economic growth in remote locations.

Though sustainable tourism requires various conditions to thrive, the visitor’s experience should be the center-piece of a tourism promotion strategy with an emphasis on connecting travelers to destinations.

These innovative approaches—Facebook integration wristbands and Ambassador Promotion Program—connects travelers to destination and tie online and offline worlds neatly and painlessly together.

It is a great bit of user-generated marketing for the resort or destination, and has the added benefit of letting guests share their experiences with their friends, colleagues and family members through social media. This will in turn bring more visitors to the location.

Cameroon’s October 9^th presidential election is fast approaching, and social media is being used to create a dialogue, raise concerns and share information about the event.

Photo credit: CNN

The country’s incumbent, Paul Biya of the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement, has been in power for 30 years despite general dissatisfaction and outcries for the president to step down. There are currently 23 candidates in the race with John Fru Ndi of the Social Democratic Front running a distant second to Biya.

The blogging community, Global Voices, is running special coverage entitled Cameroon Elections 2011 that features blog posts from citizens around the world about the elections. The bloggers have discussed various issues surrounding the election, many accusing Biya of election corruption such as paying off politicians to falsely run against him.

CNN has reported on Biya’s “complacent attitude” since he has not been campaigning in the field. His behavior implies that Biya “plans to win through election rigging and fraud.” Youth are allegedly being paid by Biya to support the leader in the streets, and nearly all government campaigning money has been distributed to his party alone.

The Twitter community is also closely following the election, sharing articles, information, and social media tools with one another. A site that has been Tweeted frequently is one that keeps track of the election search trends. Through the tool, anyone can see which party leader or election issues are being searched the most on Google.

Cameroon Election Search Trends, from https://www.google.cm/intl/en/landing/elections/2011/

Social media has allowed those interested in Cameroon’s elections to share information in ways that were never possible before. But the country lags far behind others in the region in terms of Internet penetration rates. With only 5% of the country having Internet access, most citizens will not be able to follow the social media that is providing critical perspectives on the election. Were the majority of the country’s citizens able to follow the elections online, there might be more potential for a nation-wide movement against Biya and his alleged election rigging.