Using Mobile Phones and Videos to Provide Agriculture Extension Services to Young Farmers

The Idea

Farmers will be able to send questions to us by SMS and receive responses by SMS. The system which is reffered to as the "Virtual Outreacxh System" was developed by Anton Robinson.

Young farmers will also be able to watch procedural agricultural training videos online. The videos will also be available on DVD for yourh who have limited access to the internet.

Background

Agriculture contributes 22% to Kenyas annual GDP. In addition, agriculture is the main source of revenue for 70% of the Kenyan population.

At the same time, the penetration of mobile service in Kenya has reached 64.2 per 100 inhabitants. In fact by the end of June 2011, Kenya had 25.27 million mobile subscribers. (Communication Commission of Kenya 2011).

The Problem

Since small farmers dominate farming in Kenya, state agriculture extension services are overstretched. Currently, the ratio of agriculture extension officers to farmers is 1:1200.

The Solution

Harness the power of ICT including mobile phones, websites and DVDs to increase the availability of on-demand agriculture extension services to the youth.

Outcomes

• Increased agricultural productivity
• Increased income for young Kenyan farmers

How Will it Work?

The first video shows how we envision the system working in Kenya.

The second video shows the system at work in Belize in the Carribean Islands where a pilot project was implemented. The team that implemented the pilot project in the Carribean will support us throught the implementation of our project in Kenya. This includes Anton Robinson who developed the virtual outreach system and was the manager during the implementation of the pilot project.