According to a UN Rural Poverty Report^[1], 75% of the world’s poor live in remote rural areas and make their living through agriculture. Fighting poverty in the agricultural sector therefore remains a priority.

ICTs can give farmers access to information that can form a basis for preventive and diversified farming strategies, give them access to information concerning market opportunities and prices, and help them to document knowledge of traditional production methods. In the first place, diversifying their crops can help to minimise the potentially negative impacts of environmental changes. Secondly, access to information about other markets can enable them to market their produce to a wider public. In IICD’s experience, farmers using mobile telephony and Internet services usually experience immediate benefits.

The Livelihoods projects that IICD supports contribute directly towards achieving Millennium Development Goal 1, which aims at raising income levels amongst the poorest segments of the world’s population. In those projects, small farmers and informal businesses are targeted with an eye to improving access to agricultural and business information. The users are reached through a combination of information centres with Internet access, mobile services, rural radio and television and voice radio.

Depending on the specific needs of a particular target group or geographical area, the projects generally:

• Provide small farmers with access to information on inputs, market prices, supply and demand (the information concerns local, national and international markets)
• Exchange scientific and experience-based information on traditional and modern production techniques
• Help small and medium-sized businesses to benefit from ICT-based business-support services including planning and administration, marketing and promotion.

Results for 2007

With a total of 65 projects in Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Ecuador, Ghana, Jamaica, Mali, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia, some supported jointly with Hivos, the Livelihoods sector was still the largest sector focus area for IICD in 2007. The projects reached approximately 180,000 users and no fewer than 2,500,000 beneficiaries. The users where mainly small farmers and farming associations, traders and trade organisations and, mostly informally, small and medium-sized businesses.

IICD produced a number of important ‘lessons learned’ in this sector from an analysis covering the end-users of 23 (agricultural) Livelihoods projects over the period 2003–2007:^[2]

• One major achievement in 2007 was the increased involvement and participation of small farmers in the rural areas. In line with the policy set out three years ago, the participation of users in rural areas increased slightly to 72% from 70% in 2006. Looking at income and education levels, 40% of the users had the lowest income levels; 12% of the users had never gone to school, while 32% had only been able to complete a primary-level education.
• The participating users continued to indicate high levels of satisfaction with the ICT facilities provided through the projects, including access to information centres and the Internet. In addition, an increase was recorded in the quality and frequency of use of the digital information provided through the projects.
• The results show a significant increase of around 20% (compared to 2006) in the levels of awareness and empowerment felt by participating users. This increase could be explained in part by the rise in the number of users trained through the project, which means that more people can interact directly with the information services provided by the project. There is also an indication of a better orientation of project partners in terms of the specific information needs of farmers and small and medium-scale entrepreneurs.
• For most projects, IICD found both an increasing economic impact in terms of improved revenues and a sector-specific impact in terms of efficiency, cooperation and productivity. While it was difficult to achieve an increase in economic impact during the implementation period, over 50% of all current users indicated having directly benefited from using the ICT facilities and information services provided through the projects. In Ghana and Tanzania, more than 70% of the respondents indicated having experienced that impact.
• Interestingly, IICD did not find significant differences between the impact levels on men and women, ICT clearly being relevant to both user groups. Yet, only 36% of users were women, even though they make up at least 50% of the total farmer population and play a key role in securing basic income at the household level. IICD has made efforts to address this imbalance by promoting the participation of women in training courses. It is important to point out that it is still necessary to initiate projects that focus explicitly on organisations that work with women. In Burkina Faso, for example, a choice was made to work with farming associations set up by women. Projects in the ‘sustainable agriculture’ (sub)group also tend to have better female participation levels (46% women).