Imagine a woman collecting crops with her back bend, holding cereals in one hand. Her hair is held in place with a bandana, and she is concentrating on her work. Is this the spitting image of cutting-edge technology with the potential of eradicating poverty and hunger? Well, maybe it is – if she’s holding a smartphone in her other hand.
Today, more than 2,6 billion people draw their livelihoods mostly from agriculture, not least in low-income countries. At the same time, agricultural development can be a powerful tool to eradicate extreme poverty. According to the World Bank (2022), growth in the agricultural sector is two to four times more effective in raising the income for the poorest, compared to other sectors. In addition, agriculture can contribute to achieving all the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (2022). In other words, revolutionizing the agricultural sector might be one of the most important things we can do to lift people out of poverty and at the same time address global issues such as climate change, loss of biodiversity and gender inequality.
But wait, let’s stop for awhile…
Before we go too far into this text, let me just acknowledge a few things. First, I am a middle-class, middle-aged white woman, studying at a Swedish university tutored by mainly middle-aged, white men and I’m building this text on some core readings that are also written by mainly white, European men. In other words, my reflections are my own and may be very different from some of the groups I refer to in this text. Second, in this text I will use a few terms such as the global South/North, developed and developing countries, ICT, international development etc. Each of these terms could be contested, analyzed, discussed, and narrowed down in perpetuity, but considering the scope of this text and the fact that it is a blog post, I ask you to bear with me – or add your comments at the end of the post. Now, let’s move on.
ICTs has Entered the Agriculture Field
As I mentioned in my interactive post on this blog, agriculture today is far from what it once was. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has entered the playing (and sown) field. With the rise of ICT-based solutions in low-income countries, local farmers have increased access to business-relevant knowledge which, according to the scholars Krone and Dannenberg (2019, p 80), has led to positive expectations of the ICT impacts on “economic, social and political development in low-income countries”. These expectations have resulted in programs and projects, often funded by international banks and donor organizations under the term ICT4D – Information and Communication Technology for Development (2019, p 80).
Attracting Young Workforce
In addition, developing agriculture by moving away from heavy, manual work towards high-tech solutions using drones, artificial intelligence (AI) and smartphones might lead to well-paid white-collar jobs, potentially attracting the young generation to agriculture and reverting urbanization. On top of that, precision farming, automated irrigation and drone surveillance of crops can do wonders for the environment, by reducing the use of fertilizers and pesticides.
This “Brave, New World” where digital agriculture has the potential to solve several challenges for the entire humankind is beautifully illustrated in the video below:
But Let’s Not Get Too Happy…
Did you notice the use of “can, “might”, expectations”, and “potential”, in the paragraphs above? Well, I’m sure that you, as a devoted reader to this blog, are familiar with the concept of the digital divide – the fact that there is a gap between those who have access to internet and ICTs and those who have not. This gap can be a comparison of developed and developing countries (yes, problematic terms, I know), but also a gap within countries, between men and women, between children on the street and children in school and those with access to 5G compared to those with access only to 2G. The gap could disadvantage those who are disabled, old people or illiterates, those not owning a smartphone, and so on (Kunyenje, 2017). And as the benefits with ICTs increase, this gap will grow (Heeks, 2017). And when it comes to the digital divide – digital agriculture is no exception.
Connectivity is Key but Not the Only One
A research article published in November 2020 in Nature Sustainability showed that as little as 24% of the small-scale farmers (<1ha in size) have access to 3G or 4G compared to up to 80% for the larger farms (> 200 ha) (Mehrabi et al, 2020). This is disturbing as the roughly 500 million smallholder farms in the world who contribute to 80% of our food, are at risk of being forced into extreme poverty by 2030 due to climate change (World Bank, 2019). Without connectivity, they risk lagging behind even more.
Despite the disheartening statistics above, ICTs and internet access has of course improved immensely over the last decades. However, it’s also important to acknowledge that internet access isn’t the only factor for success. Tim Unwin (2019) argues that connectivity must come with support and empowerment if the poor and marginalized are to benefit from it. Unwin refers to a 2016 study which shows that those with higher socio-economic status use the internet for activities that enhance their status and promote their careers, while those with lower socio-economic status use the internet to play games and chat.
Who’s Driving?
Given the paragraph above, I would like to paraphrase my blog co-author Sara B who is asking “Who’s in the Driver’s Seat?” reflecting on responsible AI. Transferring this to the agricultural apps, I would argue that we must talk about who’s doing what. Heeks is in his work presenting a model which he calls the ladder of ICT-related roles, where the innovator, producer, enabler, and creator of e.g., an app is at the top of the ladder, while active users, passive consumers, intermediated consumers, indirect consumers and those delinked are at the bottom of the ladder (2017, p 57, fig 2.9).
Let’s take an example…
FAO has, along with local farmers and innovators developed four apps that help farmers in Rwanda and Senegal. The apps are presented in the video below, dated 2018.
If we conduct a miniature video analysis here, we can see that the sender of the video as well as the producer of the app is FAO. FAO is part of the UN which has been widely criticized for giving most of the senior positions to westerners (Foreign Policy, 2020). In the video, one man and two women are interviewed, but since they have no titles it’s not clear what their roles are. It is however, at least in my interpretation, clear that they are beneficiaries of the apps. The speaker’s voice belongs to a woman speaking with a British accent. My guess is that the aim of the video is to promote FAO’s work primarily in the global North.
Another FAO video on the same theme is presented below. It is describing a workshop on agricultural technology in cooperation with the government of Rwanda, and ICT Chamber whose “mission is to make Rwanda the leading ICT-Driven Society” (ICT Chamber, 2022)
In this video we can see that the experts and innovators are exclusively male, while the beneficiaries of the app, the farmers, are only represented by women. The only white person in the video is the one describing why this project started at all, and he is representing FAO. We can also reflect on who we are not seeing here. Supposedly the ones not able to afford to go to college, those without phones or access internet, illiterates, the older generation etc.
Great Expectations
Despite the observed weaknesses here, I find it obvious that FAO is truly trying to approach the issue from a bottom-up perspective, in this case by relying on the members of the workshop to share their knowledge with their community at home. But this huge international organization, partnering with the Rwanda government, is still the initiator, which is perhaps just confirming Krone and Dannenberg’s (2019) words above – that the expectations of positive ICT-outcomes has led to several projects by international banks and donors under the term ICT4D.
What’s also interesting in this case though, is that FAO are also partnering with private companies. This is briefly mentioned in the video. So why is this interesting? Well, Heeks argues that:
“The traditional development system – dominated by the UN, the “Bretton Woods” institutions of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, and donors from the global North – is in relative decline in the face of growing South-South development activity driven notably by emerging economies in Asia, the growing role of the private sector in development, and economic growth in lowincome countries” (Heek, 2017, p 318)
So, is FAO partnering with the private sphere for the sake of inclusion or has the private sphere approached FAO with their ICT4D-ideas? My guess would be the former, but that is a topic for another blog post.
Another interesting reflection that can be derived from the Heeks quote above is the “growing South-South development activity”. In the East Africa region, Rwanda isn’t the only country investing in ICT. Kenya is one of the most developed ICT markets in Africa and the Chinese tech giant Huawei started investments here in 1998 (Calzati, 2020). The region’s digital growth is strong and Chinese ICT-related investments are widespread. In this context, Calzati (2020) is highlighting the risk that Africas 4th Industrial Revolution (see Schwab, 2016 for more on the fourth industrial revolution), leaves room for “political manoeuvring or potential forms of data colonialism” (Calzari, 2020, p 270). Which leads us into the ethics of ICT4D and apps like the one presented above.
Ethics – do we need to talk about that?
In my intro post, I became somewhat philosophical and asked myself when ethics becomes an issue in Big Data and ICT? I would suppose that the microorganisms in the water of Dhaka still aren’t very upset about the sharing or their whereabouts in the sewer system. But I certainly feel at unease with the position of my cell phone and giving out my personal information in a health app. So, what about the small-scale farmer in Rwanda, using a rather innocent looking FAO-app for forecasting the weather and keeping track on the market prizes of millets?
My initial thought was that there shouldn’t be much to worry about. The farmer doesn’t share sensitive information, right? She’s rather using ICT,in this case the app, to take better informed decisions.
But then I came across an article discussing the ethical use of AI in agriculture (Dara et al, 2022). Dara et al points out many risks with this, such as the fact that poor design and wrongly configured systems could cause harm. As discussed above, the data gathered must be just, non-biased and inclusive – otherwise these flaws will follow the entire initiative. Transparency and accountability are other key principles of ethical AI – e.g. who will be held responsible if the AI provides the farmer with inaccurate information?
Other principles are robustness and reliability since farmers using apps that are dependent on AI “are more vulnerable to hacking, sabotage, corporate espionage, or other failures that lead to reliability issues” (Dara et al, 2022). As Dara et al concludes, there is still much to do within this field – not lest on the legal and policy side. But the nature of ICT is changing rapidly, so I can just imagine the difficulties there are to adapt in time.
Conclusion
ICTs have great potential for improving the lives of small-scale farmers in the global South. However, I can’t help getting the feeling that we’re listening to an old record repeating itself.
Reading my fellow bloggers in other groups, I have great understanding for that New Media such as social media provide a platform for political activism and for those formerly unable to make their voices heard, which Heeks (2017) calls ICT4D 2.0. I also realize that New Media has enabled the aid industry to target their audiences better and thereby help create a real difference in the lives of those in need.
But the fundamental question of international development applies to this situation as well: how do we create an equal world, and thereby transfer power and resources from the global North to the global South, without (attentionally or not) producing yet another modernization or neo-liberalism paradigm? Or attend to digital colonialism?
In many ways, the digital divide and the use of new media and ICTs for development face the same challenges that have been prevalent throughout the history of international development. There are so many possibilities, and unarguably much will of doing good – but until we solve the 10.000-dollar question, we may have problems creating that “Brave, New World” of our vision – and instead risk winding up in Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel.
Does the solution lie in more laws and regulations on datafication and new media? Or can we rely on the voices of the masses demanding accountability as they now have better and more inclusive platforms? Will it be large private companies and the new superpower of China that forms a new paradigm in the 4IR? And how will that affect our personal integrity and the use of our data?
Maybe the way forward lies in the question posed by Silvia Masiero in her 2022 opinion paper; “Should we still be doing ICT4D research?”. Masiero argues that many of the old theoretical foundations of ICT4D no longer apply and that many former assumptions have been problematized. Still, the author’s conclusion is that yes – ICT4D research is in fact more important than ever. The theoretical field has indeed changed since the start, therefore its crucial to problematize the original assumptions, to embrace renewal and have an open and interdisciplinary dialogue with other fields.
The future is happening now, and we need to talk about it. I can’t wait.
Reflections on the blog exercise
Before I formally end this post, I would like to add some reflections on my experiences working with this group blog. In my professional role working with communication, I regularly use WordPress meaning that the tool as such was not new to me. The thing that worried me the most beforehand was instead the group work.
Reflecting critically, I know that one of my personal weaknesses is that I prefer working individually. I was registered for this course last fall as well but decided to apply for a pause in the studies to concentrate on my then newborn baby. My experiences from the few weeks I participated though, were that working in a group was time-consuming, far too detail oriented and that our different ambition levels created problems. Fortunately, none of that has been an issue this time. The success factors are, as I see it, a very clear division of responsibilities and regular communication. It has also been inspiring to see how the different members of the group complete each other in terms of expertise, areas of interest and preferred working methods – and thanks to that created something quite spectacular. This is something I would benefit from remembering also in my professional career.
In terms of the learning experience, I must admit that this blog exercise was far more useful than I anticipated. In a traditional academic course, I read the literature, but unfortunately rarely remember much of it in the long run. This time, I not only read the literature – in my mind, I also applied it to the different blog texts I planned to write, and after having the text ready, I edited it, found illustrating photos and actually noticed that the issues I discussed followed me in my everyday life in ways which I haven’t experienced before.
Interested in the topic? Here’s a list of references:
Calzati, S. (2020). “‘Data sovereignty’ or ‘Data colonialism’? Exploring the Chinese involvement in Africa’s ICTs: a document review on Kenya”, Journal on Contemporary African Studies. 40 (2). Pages 270-285. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/02589001.2022.2027351
Convention on Biological Diversity. (2022) 2.6 BILLION PEOPLE DRAW THEIR LIVELIHOODS MOSTLY FROM AGRICULTURE. URL: https://www.cbd.int/article/biodiversityforfood-1 Retrieved 2022-11-03
Dara R, Hazrati Fard SM and Kaur J (2022) Recommendations for ethical and responsible use of artificial intelligence in digital agriculture. Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence. 5:884192. doi: 10.3389/frai.2022.884192
FAO. (2022). Sustainable Development Goals. URL: https://www.fao.org/sustainable-development-goals/en/Retrieved: 2022-11-03
Foreign Policy (2020) The U.N has a Diversity Problem. Westeners are overrepresented in senior positions across the world body. URL: https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/10/16/un-diversity-problem-workforce-western-ocha/ Retrieved: 2022-11-05
Heeks, Richard. 2017. Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D), Taylor & Francis Group. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/malmo/detail.action?docID=4912767
ICT Chamber (2022). About Us. URL: https://www.ictchamber.rw/about-us/ Retrieved: 2022-11-05
Kunyenje, G. (2017). Digital Divide: The Case of Africa in Skouby et al (eds) Handbook on ICE in Developing Countries: 5G Perspective. River Publishers. Gistrup, Denmark.
Krone, M and Dannenberg, P. (2019). Development or Divide? Information and Communication Technologies in Commercial Small-Scale Farming in East Africa, in Graham, M, (editor) Digital Economies at Global Margins. Ottawa, MIT Press. p 79-101.
Masiero, S. (2022). ‘Should we still be doing ICT4D research?’, The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries, 88 (5). doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/isd2.12215
Mehrabi, Z., McDowell, M.J., Ricciardi, V. et al. (2020) ‘The global divide in data-driven farming’. Nature Sustainability. 4, 154–160 (2021). Doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-020-00631-0
Schwab, K. (2016). The Fourth Industrial Revolution. World Economic Forum. Geneva, Switzerland.
Unwin, T. (2019). Digital Economies at the lobal Margins: A Warning from the Dark Side in Graham, M, (editor) Digital Economies at Global Margins. Ottawa, MIT Press. p 43-46.
World Bank. (2019). Future of Food: Harnessing Digital Technologies to Improve Food System Outcomes.
URL: https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/agriculture/publication/future-of-food-harnessing-digital-technologies-to-improve-food-system-outcomes Retrieved: 2022-11-03
World Bank. (2022). Agriculture and Food. URL: https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/agriculture/overview Retrieved 2022-11-03.
