‘ICT makes
life much easier’
Interview with François Laureys on innovative
solutions for Livelihoods
As IICD’s Country Manager for both Burkina Faso and
Mali, François Laureys has gained invaluable experience in using ICT to help
improve the livelihoods of the poor in developing countries. As he sees it,
many of the problems that confront farmers and small-scale entrepreneurs stem
from a lack of communication or information. ICT-based solutions developed
together with the people who will use them will help to change things for the
better.
In countries like Burkina Faso and
Mali, farmers often have no access to information on how to improve their
production or how and where to find pesticides and fertilizers at a good price.
They remain unaware of changes in regulations and they often do not know the
latest market prices. And since developments in market price can be hard to
gauge and crops can fail, many farmers are still afraid to start producing for
the market. They feel more secure in limiting their production to their
household needs. In the same way, a lot of small-scale entrepreneurs are only
barely surviving, making just enough to sustain their families. With little or
no long-term vision, they are rarely in a position to take risks. That, in
turn, makes it difficult for their businesses and livelihoods to grow.
How can ICT possibly help in the
face of such fundamental problems? Laureys explains: “I don’t
think ICT itself can solve any of the
main problems, but it can certainly help people to organise themselves better,
to gain better access to specific information and to communicate with other
people. And it can help solve more specific things like efficiency issues. For
example ICT can make life much easier for farmers who need to collect huge quantities
of data for the certification they need in order to export mangos to Europe. In
the broadest sense, so if you include things like mobile telephones, ICT is
already having an impact on mobility, on the ease of communication and on the
speed at which information travels. Many farmers are already using mobile
phones to find out whether it’s worthwhile to bring a particular product to a
certain place or whether the price a middleman is offering them is
reasonable.” In Laureys view, using ICT to bring about empowerment will result in a
very measurable impact in terms of balancing information and communication in
the short term, while in the long term, producers and entrepreneurs who are
better informed will be better able to develop strategies for themselves.
IICD’s role in all this is not
simply to provide ready-made, standard ICT solutions, but rather to facilitate
a process in which (local) consultants help local partners identify possible
ICT-based solutions for specific problems in their particular context. And
sometimes the solution the local partner develops for one problem may actually
end up solving some other problem even better. So it’s often a question of
trial and error or rather of constantly fine-tuning the solution.
While the solutions that are
developed in this way are not standard, this approach to working towards a
solution is something that can be applied universally. Laureys: “People in the
developing world face essentially the same kinds of hurdles that we do here in
Europe when we are trying to modernise our organisations or our environment.
You need to prototype, for example: to have a kind of initial solution and a
trial and then see what the positive and negative effects are. And that is
going to be a continuous process, because the minute you solve an existing
problem there will always be something else that needs to be solved. In our
work at IICD, I think it is really important that we try to see our partners as
being in a process or in development and that we don’t simply show up with some
kind of blueprint solution.” As Laureys sees it, part of the solution is that
people start to work on their own problems since that will help them be more
aware of potential solutions. They will start developing as soon as they get
started thinking. “But that is hardly really specific to ICT,” Laureys admits.
I’d say it’s really more about change management than about ICT. If I look at
the work we do, I think in the end it’s 80% change management and 20%
technology. But the technology is what makes people change. It’s the catalyst.”
The demands of farmers or farmers’
associations in countries like Burkina Faso and Mali are often related to
specific kinds of information like market prices. But while the kinds of
technologies that can be used for that will generally be the same everywhere,
the specific solutions will nevertheless vary from place to place. Even those
that may be universally applicable will still need to be adapted or fine-tuned
to the local circumstances. Laureys: “It really depends on where you are
working and with whom, what their status is and what kind of solution they
need. There are huge differences between countries – but also within individual
countries – in terms of development. While Ghana is generally more developed that
Mali or Burkina Faso, for example, certain areas in Ghana will no doubt be less
developed than some areas in Burkina or Mali. Those kind of differences make it
difficult to apply the same solution everywhere.”
The differences in context require
different solutions. Laureys illustrates this with the following examples:
“While mobile-phone-based solutions often benefit areas that still have no
access to the Internet, they will be of no use in vast areas in Mali where even
telephone lines or any possibilities for mobile telephony are still lacking. Then
there is the language problem: a country may have some 20 or 30 languages, and
since many of the farmers only speak their local language, a mobile phone
solution in just one language may still be of no help in another region.
Finally, illiteracy can also pose a problem in this connection. Thanks to a
regional market price platform that was developed in Ghana and operates over
the entire Western region, those in Burkina Faso who are interested can receive
SMS alerts about prices of specific products. But we found out that most of
those in Burkina Faso who could potentially benefit from that service don’t
actually use it because they are illiterate. They may well use mobile phones,
since they have a strong oral culture, but they don’t use written SMS
messaging. In that case, the next step might be to develop messages that can be
transformed into spoken messages that can once again be sent via SMS.”
As Laureys sees it, that constant
fine-tuning of solutions is something that applies just as much to the entire
process of facilitating the development of solutions. In other words, the role
of IICD also needs continual adjusting over time. He envisions IICD working
closely with sectoral experts (e.g. agricultural experts) so that IICD can
include their expertise in the package its offers. Ideally those would be
people from the local area itself or who are at least very familiar with the
area. He explains: “If you want people to become entrepreneurs, they are going
to need to understand exactly what the real constraints are. If you want the
end-user, the farmer in the field, to really benefit from the kind of
information that we have so far helped him gain access to, you should also help
him commercialise and sell his products more effectively. I think we need to
move towards solutions that actually take into account the whole picture.”
Laureys is convinced that merely helping local farmers’ organisations develop a
system for spreading information on market prices isn’t enough. Associations of
farmers that produce maize will need to know exactly what the sellable
production is of each of their individual members so that they can put it all
together and market it. Such organisations are going to need help working with
systems that will allow them to improve their internal communications so that
they will have a better understanding of things like: who their members are,
what their individual production is from year to year or month to month, which
transporters are used and how they can make transport times more efficient if
it concerns a large area. “You need to be able to match supply and demand so
you will need to have insight into the demand and a bridge between the two,” he
says. “That higher level of information is what I think IICD needs to focus on
in future.”
Return to main text >>
