Tag: Agriculture
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Mobile Financial Services for the Poor – What We Must Know
Posted on February 02, 2013Read moreFredrick Ndiwalana is Relationship Manager, Applab Money Accelerator, and Ali Ndiwalana is Research Lead, AppLab Money Incubator, at Grameen Foundation Uganda.
There is consensus that the poor (those living on less than $2.50 per day) need the same kind of financial services as their more affluent counterparts, albeit in smaller affordable units. What is not clear – especially in markets where formal financial exclusion is high and innovation is low – is whether financial institutions can design pro-poor financial products. After all, this is an area where...
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The Difference a CKW Makes
Read moreLydia Namubiru is Partnership Analyst, CKW program, at Grameen Foundation Uganda.
For a long time, Charles Mukonyi of Gamatui parish in Kapchorwa had a problem with his chickens – the hens died off soon after hatching new ones. Three months ago, he was visited by his neighbor Tabitha Salimo who told him that she had a phone that has huge amounts of agricultural knowledge to answer many of the problems farmers face. Naturally, the first thing Charles asked about was the hen problem. Tabitha checked her phone and informed Charles that his hens were likely to be...
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Simple mobile tools to combat fake agricultural inputs
Read moreWhitney Gantt is Partnerships Manager, CKW program, at Grameen Foundation Uganda.
Poor farmers in Uganda routinely struggle with access to agricultural inputs, such as fertilizer and improved seed varieties, that would boost their crop yields. Access to improved inputs is one of the highest impact scenarios for improving farmer productivity. In the right context, the application of fertilizer can significantly increase yields, by up to 300% – which means the potential to triple income.
Two of the chief constraints for a smallholder farmer to buy these...
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How did James Amadi benefit from his local Community Knowledge Worker?
Read moreEdward Chelangat is CKW Field Officer Kapchorwa , at Grameen Foundation Uganda.
“James Amadi is a farmer who uses CKW services. He has benefited from coffee tips and price information. His coffee trees are green in a dry season largely because of following CKW advice on manure application. James also said the CKW has helped him identify diseases in his coffee plantation, for example leaf rust which he though it was coffee berry disease. He sprayed orious fungicide which cleared it off.”
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A few tweaks in the CKW intervention can deliver more impact to farmers
Read moreLydia Namubiru is Partnership Analyst, Community Knowledge Worker program, at Grameen Foundation Uganda.
Samuel Olara’s chickens were getting weak and sleepy. He feared they had caught something that would kill them and he didn’t know how to save them. Fortunately, he knew someone who might know. He walked 2 kms to the local CKWs’ home to consult on chicken diseases and their treatments. The CKW in turn consulted his phone and advise Olara to treat his chicken with soda ash. They quickly recovered and were doing well three weeks later when a Grameen...
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A Day in The Life of a (Female) Community Knowledge Worker
Read moreWhitney Gantt is ICT Innovation Technical Program Officer, at Grameen foundation Uganda.
Right now we’re in a planning phase—which ultimately means we’re wrestling with the “big” challenges that become even more significant at scale. We’re building partnerships to begin recruiting Community Knowledge Workers (CKWs) in early 2010 and that has me thinking about one of those challenges: how do we ensure that female farmers have an equal opportunity to participate as CKWs and that they have the same access to services offered through the CKW channel?
In the...
