Excitement and skepticism ahead of ICT4Ag

I'm currently somewhat of a (twisted version of) a seasonal migrant worker.  I've been on the road for most of the working week for some time now, and will continue to do so pretty much till the end of the year.  This means every Monday (or Sunday) I board a flight somewhere, and return Friday  (or Saturday).  While all these trips are useful and important for my work, when the taxi rolls up to take me to the airport at 5am on a Monday morning, I'm usually not bursting with excitement. 

My upcoming trip will be somewhat different.  I am actually really looking forward to traveling to Kigali, Rwanda tomorrow for The ICT4Ag conference.  Reading the the conference program, it looks like one of the most interesting conferences I've seen in a long while.  What's more, with no official hosting/planing/facilitating duties, I can be more of a free agent, attending the sessions I am interested in and exploring innovative partnerships around ICT in Agricultural Development.  It should be a lot of (productive) fun! 

I didn't need to read the detailed program to know that M-everything (money, learning, etc. etc.)  will dominate the agenda.  Mobile is sooooo sexy right now, especially in East Africa.  The killer app of development.  It fuels just about any innovation that becomes the flavor of the year - the current craze around cash transfers (interesting posts also here and here) is just one point in case, with M-Pesa transfers being one of the major enablers of Give Directly's experiments in Kenya.   I'm looking forward to meeting and exploring some really cool potential projects that involve mobile with a number of partners.  

Along with the excitement, I also have some serious doubts about all most of the hype around M-everything.  For one thing, for all its noise, mobile is still FAR behind the real king of ICT4D - its older and more boring cousin, the radio.  For instance, according to a 2012 study of small-scale farm households in Kenya, radio is used by 95% of the households. Even though two-thirds of the households also have access to mobile phones, only 11% of mobile phone owners use these devices to access to agricultural applications such as ‘iCow’, which registered farmers use to receive information on, for example, optimal feeding regimes and gestation cycles for their particular cows. The authors also note that the quality of the messages is still far from optimal - though more research is needed on this. Personally, I think we need to take such findings very seriously.  Too few mobile-based initiatives (that I know of) are actually looking to tap into and complement existing channels such as radio.  Why is that?   Is it not interesting enough?  Are we looking for a complete paradigm shift?  Is this a funding issue?   Am not sure, but will hopefully get some answers in the coming week.  

Finally, on a lighter note, the buzz around mobile in developed countries is becoming more balanced of late, with more emphasis being placed on some of the socially negative side-effects of M-everything, anytime anywhere societies.   See this Slate article from yesterday entitled Smartphones are killing us — and destroying public life - I particularly enjoy the reference to Kit-Kat (a chocolate brand) sponsored benches with Wi-Fi blockers in Amsterdam to allow busy city-dwellers  an escape from the constant connectivity.

Mobile learning - some initial thoughts.

I recently blogged about MOOCs, which prompted an interesting Twitter exchange with Guy Pfefferman of the Global Business School Network and Dan LeClair of The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB).

The starting point was Guy's recent article in BizEd, which focuses on mobile learning.

I have to admit, my first reaction was (and is till) skeptical.  When we talk of mobile learning in a developing country context, we're not talking iPads or iPhones.  We're not even talking basic android phones (yet).  Remember your Nokia handset from 1997?  Most times, that's the closer cousin to what you'll find.  I haven't researched the topic enough to make any kind of statement with certainty, but instinctively, this doesn't seem to be a great learning platform to me, with the obvious limitations of screen size etc.

Sure, it can work for many things - especially practical areas where you need a conrete piece of information.  Think market prices, medical consultation, etc.  These are not new, and there are lots of examples around.  For instance, my employer, the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI)  joined hands with others on such projects  - for instance mfarmer - where we provide agricultural value added services (Agri VAS) for smallholder farmers in emerging markets.  The purpose of these mobile services is to bridge the information gap faced by smallholder farmers and to improve poor farming households’ resilience and decision-making as a result of better access to relevant agricultural information.  You can read more about similar initaitves on the GSMA Mobile for Development website.

These are great initiatives, and I think they can make a real difference, and we are just scratching the surface.   But this is not mobile learning in the sense of what MOOCs are projected to do to classroom learning.  It is no substitute for traditional classroom education - at least not yet.  As Guy points out - we're still missing business models for mobile learning. A recent UNESCO conference touched upon aspects of this - including a mobile MOOC - have a look for yourself, some interesting stuff.  Still, not a game changer as far as I can see - and certainly no business model yet.  

At this early stage of thinking about the topic, I feel what we really need is to look at how technology (and with all the mobile hype, radio is still the king of rural) can be combined into blended learning that prepares youth for starting business or finding jobs.  Technology alone will not be a panacea.  

This said, I still need to do more reading and thinking about this exciting area.  Very much looking forward to ICT4Ag conference in Kigali, where I hope to pick up the thread.