ADDIS ABABA – As the growth of population and food demand become major issues of concern to intensify efforts of agricultural productivity, recent forums indicated that digitization is a core area for the development of Ethiopia’s agriculture, said Million Getnet (PhD) a Consultant at the International Livestock Research Institute.
According to him ICT has been playing crucial role in reaching millions of smallholder farmer in the past few years only with the IVR system, which was implemented by the Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA). It has enabled farmers to obtain different information and access to professional advises.
“It is a difficult task to know what type of input, seed, fertilizer that the farmers need at certain production season including what they used over the past one. Plans are being implemented based on estimations. But input voucher systems, which are delivered through ICT tools, have their own significant roles in improving the agricultural ways. It is essential to collect meaningful information to support future agricultural practices,” he noted.
He said if ICT is given due attention, it could be easier to facilitate access on agricultural extension development activities. An extension worker on a recent workshop revealed that she used to deliver service for farmers traveling about seventeen kilo meters on foot just to reach out one Kebele. But if different ICT tools are implemented, there would not be a need for the extension workers to travel such a long way to reach last mile smallholder farmers, said Million.
In this case, community radios, video based extension, and mobile application services could play an important role in delivering information and the appropriate extension service to the farmers easily. Therefore ICT could solve most of the problems that occur because of lack of information, he stressed.
According to him, providing more ICT related experiences of other countries to Ethiopian agriculture sector actors including policy and decision makers is one of the priority focus areas of ILRI in its Sustainable Agricultural Intensification Research and Learning Alliance (SAIRLA) program.
The Ethiopian Herald Sunday Edition October 13/2019
BY HENOK TIBEBU
