The women belong to the group TIAME, a farming group in the village of Peko-Misegese, in Morogoro. “TIAME” is the local language for “lets us work together”.
This group produces various crops including vegetables, beans, sunflower and round potatoes but these farmers face market problems. The market for their crops is not reliable and the farm gate price for their crops is usually low. The existing marketing chain is farmer-middlemen-consumer. This village has no reliable transport to market centers but electricity supply is within the village. Farmers can use electricity to charge their mobile phones.
The most common ICTs owned by some of the families in this village are radios, usually controlled by the head of household. Radio is normally used for listening to the news and music; farmers are not used to listening to radio programmes that announce daily average crop prices at different market centres in the country; therefore accessibility to market information is a big problem.
How ICTs can help these women
The aim of this GenARDIS project is to improve women’s crop marketing chain and farmers’ household income through using ICTs in the Uluguru Mountains of Tanzania. Ruth Madulu, from the Mikocheni Agricultural Research Institute (MARI), the the Ministry of Agriculture Food Security and Cooperatives that serve as a national coordination center for coconut and biotechnology research, are leading the initiative. The idea is to train female farmers in the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) such as mobile phone and radio in crop marketing.
The project seeks to train farmers on how to use mobile phone, radio in marketing their crops- in market searching, scouting/spying and building better collaborative market chains from farmer to consumer, and to purchase mobile phones, radios and distribute them to farmers in order to use in building better marketing network.
What are the gender and ICT issues at stake?
Access to ICTs is generally easier for men than women in rural areas. However, women make up the majority of the agricultural labour force in rural areas of developing countries. Lack of reliable income and cultural issues limit women’s use of these tools. Access and control of mobile phones will enable women to use innovative ways to market their farm produce. Also, awareness on the use of radio to access market information will help them use this tool effectively, as it is a common household tool.
Towards economic empowerment
Once the farmers understand the market chains they are in, who the key players are and they meet and talk to them, this should awaken some new ideas on marketing. A collaborative marketing chain will be established. This will enable the farmers to access the market information and thus be able to market their farm produce using real time prices. Also, they will be able to compare prices for farm produce in different markets before selling the products. Ultimately, farmers’ income will increase because of a reliable access to market prices, which will help improve their livelihoods.
However, sharing knowledge on the use of ICTs in produce marketing will help farmers to expand production in their fields. This will increase income and food security. This is a good strategy to empower people at the grassroots, as this knowledge will also be relevant for marketing different products in the future.
Financial empowerment will boost women’s social status in the community; the nutritional health will also improve, due to sufficient food and money in households.
