By Darlington
Kahilu
Agriculture and Livestock
Minister Emmanuel Chenda has called for increased utilization of Information Technology in enhancing agricultural
development. Mr. Chenda says information technology should be used to ease
communication between farmers and agricultural stakeholders. He said this in Lusaka when he launched
the National Agricultural Information
Services (NAIS) Short Messaging System (SMS) platform, which is supported by
the International Institute for Communications Development (IICD).
Mr. Chenda added that the
initiative by NAIS staff in coming up with the SMS platform will enable farmers
in rural areas of the country to keep in touch with subject matter specialists
in his ministry and close the communication gap between farmers and
agricultural stakeholders. He noted that the platform culminates from the
lessons learnt in the first phase of the project which was aimed at improving
information flow between agricultural information sources and the end users by
improving the efficiency of NAIS to gather, process, store, package and
disseminate information in order to increase farmers’ productivity. Mr. Chenda
further said that the SMS platform will modernize the feedback reporting system
used by Radio farm Forums with the online database.“This entails that farmers
will be able to use their mobile phones to send questions directly to the radio
producers of the language they are conversant with and receive answers in real
time”. However, Mr. Chenda noted that the current cost of K900 per SMS was too
expensive for farmers and appealed to the Zambia Information
Communication Authority (ZICTA) to consider waiving the cost to enable farmers to
have access to innovation. “The SMS cost of K900 is on the higher side and
initiatives by the department have been made to request ZICTA to help waiver
this rate by allocating NAIS with a short-code so as to enable more farmers to have
easy and cheaper access to the platform”.
Meanwhile, IICD Country
Programme Manager for Zambia, Mrs Theresa Stanton,
says that information and communication technology (ICT) contributes to many
innovations, stating that “…the challenge is for information providers to think
out of the box in order to come up with new, fast and effective ways of getting
hold of the information needed to stabilize and enhance the livelihoods of
rural communities”. She stressed that the combination of traditional and modern
ICTs, specifically radio and SMS messaging, makes for a powerful use of both
technologies and that the information requests that NAIS receives from Zambia’s
farmers will enable radio broadcasters to track and trace the questions and see
clearly what is happening in the agricultural sector. “An added benefit is that
frequently asked questions can later be used to determine the themes of the
radio programmes that NAIS broadcasts, and ultimately contribute to
agricultural research”. She further said that the NAIS SMS platform illustrates
how ICTs can be easily adapted and fine-tuned to respond to the needs of the
farmers. “Let us learn from NAIS’s experiences – from the successes and
challenges along the way – so that all of us can begin using ICT as a catalyst
to achieve our own development goals in the agricultural sector.”
Mrs. Stanton added that
for systems like these to succeed and be sustained, they need government
support and the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock is therefore in the best
position to take the lead in this initiative and drive it forward. She further
called on all stakeholders to work together and explore how ICT can be used –
simply and effectively – to assist Zambian farmers achieve food security, a
greener economy, and economic success.
NAIS Deputy Director, Mr.
Mutukewa Mukelabai, says that the SMS system will help to address the
challenges his department has been facing in disseminating agricultural
information. He said the setting up of the ICT project in his department has
enabled agricultural information officers in NAIS to have easy access to proven
up-to-date information sources that are available on the Internet.
And giving a
vote of thanks at the same function, Mrs. Mary Mulenga, a small-scale farmer
from Kasama, said that as farmers they have been facing many problems in
carrying out the farming activities.
“Among the problems we have been facing is a lack of timely
information”. Mrs. Mulenga said it takes a long time for farmers to get
feedback on the various questions they ask the experts in agriculture as the
post office is the only means of sending and receiving information in rural
areas. She said the SMS platform will enable farmers to receive agricultural
information in time. “Northern
Province has poor radio reception. Even when there is
a response on the radio to the farmers’ questions, farmers miss the message due
to poor radio reception”. She said with the SMS platform in place, farmers are
confident that they will get timely feedback, especially due to the fact that
most agricultural camps in the country are not manned. Apart from English,
farmers will be able to use the service in all the seven major local languages;
namely Bemba, Kaonde, Lunda, Luvale, Lozi, Nyanja and Tonga. Framers will be able to type NAIS,
language code leave space, ask your question and send to 3009. The
system is currently only available to Airtel subscribers; however, the system
will be available to all networks in due course. The language codes are EN for
English, BE for Bemba, KA for Kaonde, LU for Lunda, LV for Luvale, NY for
Nyanja, LO for Lozi and TO for Tonga. Codes can be sent either in capital
letters or small letters.
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