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Improving the use of ICTs to integrate gender and nutrition in agricultural extension

The use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the provision of agricultural extension services improves farmers’ access to information and knowledge. This helps them make informed decisions that improve their production and access to the market, among other benefits. To ensure effective and sustainable integration of gender into agricultural extension services as well as improve food and nutrition security, ICTs can play an important role if and when they are carefully integrated into the system.

Woman farmer receiving mobile money on her phone. Photo by Sayma Islam, Research Assistant, WorldFish/flickr

To integrate ICTs into agricultural extension services systems, a careful analysis of information, communication and knowledge needs of women farmers is essential. Understanding constraining issues that would make this integration a challenge such as women farmers’ access to devices as well as how to respond to handle the barriers is important to the success of this endevour.

Constraints encountered in the implementation of ICTs in provision of agricultural extension services

Some of the commonly used ICT interventions include the use of SMS services, provision of information portals in form of websites, Interactive Voice Response systems, radio programmes, recorded audio playing devices, recorded video playing devices and television programmes and mobile applications, among others. Implementing these interventions is faced with various constraints leading to unsuccessful or less impact projects.

The constraints encountered in the integration of ICT in the provision of agricultural extension services are around issues including language and literacy, trust, access to devices and knowledge of operation, cell phone network coverage and costs, device support, web access, electricity, sustainability and ownership, and lack of effective integration into agricultural extension services systems, among others.

Rethinking the approach to Integrating ICTs into Agricultural Extension Services Systems

Information disseminated to women farmers, whether in form of text, audio or video should be in a language that can be understood by the recipients. Because of low literacy levels among women, information being transmitted should be encoded in a form that makes it easy for them to understand. For instance, information which has been encoded into audio or video and translated into a local language can be understood by most women with low levels of literacy than text even if it were to be translated. Ownership of devices and knowledge on how to operate them is low among women than in men.

Creating an enabling environment for women to own these devices and learn how to operate them would increase their access to information, communication and knowledge. It is also important to ensure that trust is created between women farmers and the source of information. To ensure effectiveness and sustainability, ICTs should be integrated fully in AES systems and not just be implemented as standalone projects. Guidelines can be developed to help institution s integrate ICTs into AES systems, this will ensure careful assessment of needs, choice of relevant ICT tools and methodologies such as the provision of ICT services by local young entrepreneurs, partnerships, capacity development, implementation and monitoring and evaluation.


If effectively integrated into AES systems, ICTs can improve women farmers’ access to information, communication and knowledge. Better access to information, communication and knowledge can improve participation and decision making for women and empower them to improve their production of crops and ruminants. It also improves awareness of nutritional implications of their food systems, an important aspect to help achieve integration of gender and nutrition into AES systems.

By Simon Wandila, Social Reporter. INGENAES Global Symposium and Learning Exchange. January, 2017. Lusaka, Zambia

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