Backpack Farm Launches KUZA Doctor: Mobile (sms) Farmer Tech Support in Partnership with Mercy Corps
4 min readKenya’s smallholder farmers to boost food production and increase capacity with cutting edge mobile training content – SMS content & animated movies – a for social enterprise in East Africa
The Backpack Farm Agriculture Program (BPF) and Mercy Corps are pleased to announce the launch of “KUZA DoctorSM,” a mobile based (SMS) tool providing text-based, technical support to smallholder farmers in Kenya. Farmers voluntarily register to receive messages in either English or Swahili. In support of these efforts, the BPF team and Mercy Corps have joined forces to market the training tool to more than 17 million smallholder farmers inKenya, consistently challenged by drought, poor yields and post harvest losses. “Mobile solutions hold the potential to positively transform the lives of smallholder farmers and build more productive, equitable, and environmentally-sound food and farming systems in a cost-effective way. Helping to facilitate the growth of commercially sustainable social enterprises that develop and service these technologies is a scalable and sustainable way to build access to a wide variety of vital technical and financial tools that can decrease hunger, increase incomes, and improve environmental sustainability for millions”, states Mercy Corps’ Director of Agricultural Development, Keith Polo.
Training is the key element to transforming the lives of smallholder farmers not only in Kenya and East Africa but around the world. Training is a particularly important element when new technologies such as mobile extension services are introduced. It is essential in enabling farmers to effectively interact with the basic agronomic, financial, and green agri-tech information delivered via mobile phones. In addition to providing cost-effective, mobile-delivered technical information to smallholder farmers, access to face-to-face training is key to transforming the lives of smallholder farmers and is available via a network of rural training farms, a uniquely designed franchise program.
More than just simple text (sms) messaging, the team is fundraising to support a series of more than thirty (30) 2D/3D animated training films developed in partnership with ‘Scientific Animators without Borders.’ Films will be published in four (4) regional languages including English, French and Swahili, made publically available as part of a database of open source, training materials.
Additionally, the Backpack Farm program is engaging with local, financial institutions to incubate new, fair termed financial products and extension services to support Africa’s smallest green farmers in both Sub Saharan Africa and other regions.
Mercy Corps will apply its expertise in building pro-poor, mobile financial services to develop technology-based solutions such as whole-farm budget planning and micro-insurance ensuring a sustainable network of local agents to support these operations. .
The goal of this unique partnership of social enterprise and non-profit sectors demonstrates how challenges associated with hunger and poverty can be overcome cost-effectively, at scale in a self-sustainable manner. Rachel Zedeck, MD of the Backpack Farm believes, “only through cooperative development can we launch the most practical training services. By increasing the basic capacity of farmers, we will prove that Africa’s smallest “green” farmers have the potential to significantly contribute to feeding regional and global value chains while maintaining environmental integrity.”
The team is actively incubating an expansion throughout the East Africa region eventually targeting West Africa specifically targeting Ghana and farmers within specific value chains such as palm oil and cocoa.
Mercy Corps, a registered 501c3 charity exists to alleviate suffering, poverty and oppression by helping people build secure, productive and just communities. To achieve our mission, we apply our vision for change that engages the private, public and civil society sectors to effect positive change. In the agriculture sector, annually, Mercy Corps assists 700,000 smallholder farmers and 3,000 agri-businesses improve their productivity and profit while spurring sustainable food security and local economic development 30 countries, with significant operations throughout East and Sub Saharan Africa. Mercy Corps has uses more than 90% of its resources for programs that help people in need.
Scientific Animations Without BordersSM: Based at the University of Illinois (Urbana), the initiative is dedicated to the development and deployment of animated educational materials to better the lives of people in developing nations. Innovative solutions exist that can help the poorest people on the planet in a variety of scientific literature, primarily published scientific journals difficult for rural poor to access. The organization’s primary goal is to increase access of important development, health and environmental sustainability information and training to the approximately one billion low-literate learners on the planet that are in need of this important knowledge. The team has a system for creating video-based learning tools easily dubbed in any language, delivered through the Internet to most places on the planet, viewed and shared on mobile phones and other electronic devices on the ground.
For more information visit KUZA Doctor at www.Backpackfarm.com
for more information, visit: BackPackFarm.com
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