White Paper – Mobile weather services for smallscale farmers
March 2018
Authors: Saskia van Pelt, Fiona van der Burgt and Arnold Lobbrecht.
Succes factors from African case studies
Africa’s population is growing at an exceptional rate and its overall food demand is expected to double by 2050. This poses enormous challenges for the local agricultural sector, which consists to
a large extent of small-scale farmers. These farmers depend mainly on rain-fed agriculture, and their crop production is very sensitive to weather variability and climate change. The question is
how these farmers can prepare themselves to deal with the new reality, and whether modern weather services can help them. This paper presents case studies performed in various African
countries where we currently provide weather services to thousands of small-scale farmers, through various communication channels, on a daily basis.
Small-scale farmers can easily be reached by mobile phones such as ‘feature phones’. These basic phones also allow location to be determined and weather information to be downscaled. The importance of building trust and user confidence was demonstrated during field research. We found that these can be achieved by:
• Location-specific and reliable forecasts; down to the level of the farmer’s crop fields, and also showing forecasting uncertainties.
• Information and technology tailored to user needs; crop-specific, in the local language and using available channels.
• Services embedded in existing local networks, both social and professional.
• Approval of the service by national weather services, who should preferably be involved in local monitoring and broadcasting.
• Involving the right business partners; creating partnerships with local business developers in the agronomic value chain is essential.
Our aim in this paper is to inspire current and potential new partners to further develop local
weather information services with us. We provide details of the results, lessons learned and
success factors from three case studies:
• Satellite-based farm-management advisories in Kenya.
• User validation of the local weather service in Northern Ethiopia.
• A value chain of public-private partners in South Africa.
With localised information services and using existing mobile technologies, we are seeking to contribute to solving weather, climate and food problems. African small-scale farmers are the
target group as they have the highest potential to increase agricultural production and provide the continent with long-term food security.
Download the full white paper below.
