The increasing role of mobile technology in the development sector cannot be over emphasised. Mobile technology application in areas such as financial services, health and agricultural initiatives are increasing. GSMA’s agriculture deployment tracker indicates 122 mobile agricultural programmes are currently active globally. Mobile agricultural platforms are now serving as major vehicles in reaching the unreached with useful and relevant agricultural information and services.
Mobile technology is the vehicle, but content is the deliverable that gives meaning and relevancy to mobile agricultural initiatives targeting farmers and the agri-business sector. Whether these initiatives are designed for production planning, production management, marketing of agricultural produce, postharvest management or agricultural financial services; the usefulness of the service to farmers is contingent on the quality, relevancy and timing of the content delivered.
Developing and delivering relevant and quality content can be challenging and costly. It is important to consider cost, time and energy required to develop and continuously update content for the platform in order to be relevant and sustain users’ interest. GSMA is a pioneer in mobile agriculture and our experiences over the years points to three main strategies for content development:
- Centralised in-house content development – here the organisation establishes an in-house content team to source, aggregate and edit content for the platform. This method provides greater control of the content development process. However it requires specialists in different subject areas if the aim is to cover a broad range of value chains and agri-business areas. In this approach, we have often observed a compromise in the content sourcing process whereby content is sourced from websites. This causes questions on the accuracy and validity of the content. This strategy often has lower cost implications.
- Contractor-led content development – in this instance, an organisation is contracted to source, aggregate and develop content for the service. The contractor, which often is an agri-business based organisation, either has enough specialists in-house or engages the support of individual consultants and organisations to source, aggregate and edit content. This approach is often expensive and has an inherent risk for sustainable provision of content. The high cost is often related to multiple overheads cost related to sourcing and aggregating content. Updating content often presents additional and ongoing costs which increases the overall cost of the service for end-users. In some cases, revenue sharing agreements may be reached in order to reduce the cost involved. Where this is the case, end-user access costs often go up hampering access to the platform by many smallholders.
- Subject-Matter-Specialist Approach – in this approach, agreement is reached with specialised organisations such as the Cotton Board, Coffee research institute or Dairy Board, and who also have interest in disseminating outcomes of their work or knowledge to develop content for the platform in their specific areas of specialisation. This type of approach provides easy access to latest content in specific fields and ensures that information developed is of the highest standard reflecting current practices. Content could be provided either for free or on a revenue share basis. Engagement of individual organisations can be a long and drawn-out process. However the likelihood of long term engagement due to common interest is high and, this is often reflected in the level of commitment by individual organisations. Often, a full-time in-house coordinator is required to coordinate individual organisations for quality and timely delivery of content based on established standards.
While there may be other strategies for content development, these 3 do stand out. Regardless of whatever strategy one decides for content development, it is important that content review and validation structures are in place. More often than not, state or parastatals in charge of agriculture are the best organisations to verify and certify content. This process ensures the integrity of the content process and provides sufficient assurance for end-users of the service. It is worthy to mention that in some countries such as Malawi, state institutions in collaboration with other interested parties have set up a national content committee to lead agricultural content development. These new but emerging content development structures do hold some promise. The role of state institutions in content development may grow significantly. Their involvement has to be examined with regards to sustainability, streamlining of content development processes and the level of bureaucracy associated with such state level content development initiatives.
What is your experience in agricultural content development and state institutions involvement in this space? Your experience and views are welcome.