Two is better than one: putting radio & phone together to engage small scale farmers in Tanzania

Making All Voices Count Research Spotlight

Published in

Civic Tech Innovation Network

5 min readAug 2, 2017

Civic Tech doesn’t always have to be digital tech, and sometimes combining ‘new’ and ‘old’ tech may be the best way to succeed. Farm Radio International (FRI) has been able to scale up their ambitious food security intervention programme in East Africa and amplify the voices of local farmers directly affected by agricultural development projects combining the ubiquity of broadcast radio with newer technologies to get direct feedback from listeners.

By using interactive voice response technology (IVR), radio producers incorporated farmers’ feedback into their programming. This research report analyses an implementation of the Listening Post project in Tanzania, and explores the opportunities, challenges and important lessons about data gathering, responsiveness and “closing the feedback loop”.

Why you should care

This research should be of interest to civic tech projects and organisations looking to scale up their interventions, and demonstrates the power of combining new tech with established broadcast media in “chasing scale”. It also cautions civic tech project teams that “closing the feedback loop” takes more than gathering voices. If you are collecting citizens’ voices you need to be clear (and to communicate) what you will use them for and how those citizens will get to know what results have been. The report offers some guidance on thinking through these issues.

The gist of it

FRI works with African broadcasters (over 650 radio partners) to create content to share practical learnings and information for farmers, and to give farmers access to the public sphere. The Listening Post combines radio and phone, using a multi-channel web-based IVR platform called Uliza (built on an IVR system developed by VOTO Mobile). Farmers can ask questions and participate in conversations through voice and SMS. These contributions are then incorporated into Listening Post radio programming, over the course of a “Listening Post series” which tends to run for five to six weeks.

The goals of the Listening Post model include:

to collect data from farmers that is then fed back to partners assessing their impact of their agricultural projects;
to give farmers a say in what information they wanted;
to connect farmers to applicable experts;
and to amplify or facilitate the inclusion of farmers’ voices in agricultural development projects.

The research examines an implementation case of this approach in Tanzania — through content analysis of a sample of programmes — with a view to assessing the model’s success against these goals. The findings also formed part of a new design and strategy for the Listening Post which, although still in development, “has a stronger focus on both sides of the communication equation, where information flows not only to farmers from extension services and researchers, but also from farmers to government and other agricultural development actors.”

Report summary

In this report (PDF, 2.9 MB), Heather Gilberds, Calum Handforth, Mark Leclair present the findings of a 12-month research project into the possibilities created by the Listening Post model of combining new digital technologies with radio. They argue that this allows for feedback and interactivity in radio content, and helps integrate farmers’ voices into development projects. In this way, it facilitates adaptive management processes and makes these development projects more farmer-centred and responsive. This report forms part of the Making All Voices Count (MAVC) Practitioner Research and Learning grants outcomes.

By combining “old media”, broad-reach radio with a new media interactive voice response (IVR) tool, Farm Radio International have piloted a model for audience engagement, interaction, and knowledge sharing. The goal is simple: Support small-scale farmers and include them in the decision-making progress despite the distance (and privilege) barriers at play. Give them a platform to ask for what they need, to share their opinions, and facilitate closing the loop with agricultural project decision-makers.

What was done

The researchers conducted in-depth content analysis on three of six Listening Post series, and a random sample of the messages recorded by farmers on the IVR system. They coded the messages with a view to establishing:

The types of questions farmers ask when calling the IVR system as part of a Listening Post.
Whether farmers are asking similar types of questions.
The challenges to collecting useful data from farmers.

The also produced statistics on IVR engagement from farmers, including:

There were 64,449 unique interactions with the system;
A total of 11,764 individuals participated in the polls;
Extension workers answered more than 150 questions left by farmers on the system on-air

What happened?

The research found that linking a mobile-based crowd-sourcing tool (such as IVR) with ubiquitous and virtually-free radio promotes engagement with a large number of the target audience (farmers), and that the audience felt positive about the model’s usefulness, trustworthiness and potential for incorporating their voices into the processes of policy-makers and NGOs. The researchers conclude there is “clear potential” in this model “to strengthen the chain of relationships between citizens, extension services suppliers, projects and policy-makers”. The model enables:

Real-time feedback collection and collation from farmers, “that could be used to aid decision-making”
Improved accountability within agricultural development initiatives, “helping to ensure they are more responsive to farmers”.

What did the researchers learn?

One of the most important findings of the study is that “closing the feedback loop” remains a challenge. The communication technology combines to create a powerful platform, but its effects are limited unless the feedback can reach, and is considered by, those in the public service and NGO space who design the agricultural projects and frameworks that apply to these farmers-participants. The researchers conclude that these civil and public actors/decision-makers need to be identified, engaged with and even sufficiently incentivised to respond to the ‘citizen voice’ from farmers that the initiative gathered.

In addition to the broader findings about scale and the potential of combined radio and mobile, the researchers offer several take-outs for the next design and strategy phase of the Listening Post. These may be relevant for any tech for transparency and accountability initiatives (T4TAI), as well as communication for development (C4D) projects:

Effective partnerships are the key to success.
Communicate clear objectives to all stakeholders at every step of the process.
Offline processes need to support the technology.
Data quality is as important as a robust platform.
User testing can help identify possible pitfalls and methods for mitigating them.

For the full details, you can access the research report here.

Project: Farm Radio International’s Listening Post

Publication: “Exploring the potential for interactive radio to improve accountability and responsiveness to small-scale farmers in Tanzania”

Authors: Heather Gilberds, Calum Handforth, Mark Leclair