Using ICT to Increase Impact of Agriculture Sector Development

Judith Payne
United States Agency for International Development

Date:

May 19, 2011 - 9:00am - 10:30am

This seminar was the 59th installment of the Linking Small Firms to Competitiveness Strategies Breakfast Seminar Series sponsored by the USAID Microenterprise Development office.
Information and communications technologies (ICT) are being used in dozens of ways by USAID Feed the Future projects globally. Unfortunately most applications are not sustainable without on-going donor support; have not yet scaled to millions of farmers; and their impact has not yet been well measured.
USAID's Judy Payne provided an overview of some of the most promising ICT interventions that appear to be sustainable and scalable without on-going donor support and also help improve smallholder farmers’ productivity and incomes. Examples included applications that improve access to farm extension and advisory services; ease access to financial services for smallholder farmers; help large buyers better manage and reward 10,000s of producers; provide better market price information; and can help reduce post-harvest losses.
Payne also outlined some good practices related to technical and business models and addressed issues regarding measuring impact of such interventions. She drew upon work conducted under the USAID FACET Project and provided suggestions to help project implementers incorporate issues related to ICT into their value chain analyses.