Cell Phone Applications Help Farmers in Uganda

Africa's Growing Mobile Phone Market Fights Poverty With Information

Oct 10, 2009

The Grameen Foundation, a global anti-poverty organization, created AppLab Uganda to help people in rural areas connect to the internet with their mobile phones.

Remote banana farmers in rural Uganda may not have access to electricity or running water, but they use mobile phones to diagnose banana crop disease and receive information how to control it.

Laban Rutagumirwa, a 50-year-old farmer in Bushenyi, Uganda is the banana disease tracker for his rural neighbors. He collects digital photos, establishes GPS coordinates and processes surveys from farmers with sick plants (New York Times, 10/5/09).

Grameen Foundation Trains "Mobile Banana Disease Monitors"

Earlier this year, the Grameen Foundation, the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and Uganda’s National Agriculture Research Institute (NARO) trained "community knowledge workers" to become "Mobile Banana Disease Monitors" in the districts of Mbale and Mbusheni. From a drop-down menu on their phones they learn how to enter the required data and transmit them to a database for agricultural forecasting. Farmers in the pilot project have been able to limit the spread of banana wilt, a fast-spreading bacterial disease, and banana bunchy top virus through early diagnosis and treatment.

Bananas Are Essential for Food Security in Uganda

Uganda is the biggest producer of bananas in Africa and more than 10 million people depend on it as a food staple and for their income. Since 2002 banana crop disease has decimated the harvest in East Africa threatening the livelihood of an estimated 30 million farmers. The two diseases — banana bacterial wilt (BBW) and bunchy top viral disease — are both spread by insects and very few varieties of banana have resistance to them. Bacterial wilt kills off plants and makes their fruit inedible, while bunchy top stunts the growth of plants by causing leaves to sprout from the top.

Google and Grameen Launch SMS Services in Uganda

Farmer's Friend is an agricultural information service based on text messages. It was launched in June by MTN (Ugandas largest mobile network operator), Google and the Grameen Foundation's "Application Laboratory", or AppLab. The service accepts queries such as "rice aphids","tomato blight"or "how to plant bananas" and retrieves advice from a database. More complicated questions are forwarded to human experts. The query "pineapple disease" elicits the answer "Copper deficiency in pineapples leads to fruit rot. Cut affected fruit as soon as noticed and dispose of where they will not contaminate other fruits or burn." (Applab Uganda)

Building applications for agriculture in a country that relies on small farms makes a lot of sense, says

Eric Cantor, director of Grameen Foundation's AppLab Uganda initiative. Africa has the fastest growing market for mobile phones and new applications for information delivery are also tested in health care and education.

The copyright of the article Cell Phone Applications Help Farmers in Uganda in Poverty is owned by Christine Welter. Permission to republish Cell Phone Applications Help Farmers in Uganda in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.