Selecting Mobile ICT Devices for Agriculture Services and Applications in Sub-Saharan Africa

To increase agricultural productivity, farmers and agricultural workers have many needs—information about and access to financial services; knowledge on best-farming methods and techniques; and information on potential selling opportunities, agricultural inputs (e.g., seeds and fertilizer), weather, transport, storage options, and more. Information and communications technologies (ICT) offer a valuable delivery channel through which farmers can receive such information and knowledge. Provided by USAID’s Fostering Agriculture Competitiveness Employing Information Communication Technologies (FACET) project under the FIELD-Support LWA, this brief compares ICT-enabled devices. The focus of analysis is on devices that are the most applicable, affordable, usable, and understandable to the greatest number of end-users—especially poor smallholder farmers. Given how quickly device options and prices change, this paper can only give a snapshot in time of current devices, but it also offers insights regarding how to analyze new devices as they become available.

The FACET project aims to help USAID missions and their implementing partners in sub-Saharan Africa use information and communications technology in sustainable and scalable approaches to improve the impact of their agriculture-related development projects.