Enhancing Agricultural Practices Through Mobile Technology Interventions: A Case of the Democratic Republic of Congo
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is well known for its agricultural products such as maize, rice, beans, cassava, coffee, sugar cane and banana. However, the agricultural sector is hampered by many challenges. These challenges include farmers' lack of knowledge on appropriate agricultural practices, lack of knowledge on how to identify and treat crops' diseases, inefficient production and sales processes. Literature suggests that mobile technologies can be used to enhance farmers' agricultural practices. This includes the use of traditional functionalities of mobile telephone (voice and text messages) mobile applications or a combination of both. Mobile technologies could be used to educate farmers about efficient agricultural practices, inform farmers about the market prices of their products. Mobile technologies could further be used to link farmers to wholesalers (buyers) In the context of the DRC, such innovative use of mobile technologies is appropriate and necessary for various reasons. Firstly, mobile phones penetration is increasing every year. Secondly, due to the cultural diversity in the country, there is a need to create and execute mobile technology enabled interventions that appeal to the cultural context of each recipient. Hence, such interventions need to be customised to suit the language and cultural context of indigenous farmers. It is in this context, that this paper proposes a mobile technology enabled intervention to enhance agricultural practices in the DRC. Using the systems thinking approach to research, this paper firstly identifies stakeholders that should be involved in the quest to enhance agricultural practices in the country. Then, the paper depicts how these stakeholders are interlinked and how ICT and mobile technologies can link them into one single ecosystem. It is anticipated that such integration will enhance farmers' knowledge and adoption of suitable agricultural practices. Hence, the output of this study is a case study that could be used as a point of reference to design ICT and mobile technology enabled awareness programs to enhance agricultural practices in developing countries.
2019 IEEE Global Humanitarian Technology Conference (GHTC)