DOUALA, CAMEROON AFRICA. DECEMBER 2010 (news.cameroon-today.com)  -  GenARDIS (Gender, Agriculture and Rural Development in the Information Society) funda a project which aims at providing cell phones to farmers in North West province Cameroon to provide easier and faster access to market information.

GenARDIS (Gender, Agriculture and Rural Development in the Information Society)

The farmers who thrive on the returns from the crops they produce in the western Highlands of Cameroon were faced with troubling periods.

This was the time when a niche which functioned as a sort of middleman used to but their produce from them at reduced rates across all farms in the region while offering to sell those seeds and fertilizers at exorbitant prices. But the dreams of the middlemen came to an abrupt end as cellular phones started ringing with loads of information that has transported these poor farmers from oblivion to a state of total awareness.

Mama Therese who is a potato farmer in the Santa commune is a typical example. Therese just like a lot of the farmers in the commune was relying excessively on middlemen to buy her potatoes who used to pay her very less money for it.

On the other hand she had to shell out a whole lot of cash from her pocket as payment for sprayers, pesticides and hybrid seeds that she needed very urgently.

She was totally unaware of what her potatoes cost in markets that were located faraway and did not even know that these traders put a mark up price on her potatoes which in turn got them even more profits.“This has been our biggest problem,” she said.

But this does not happen anymore. They will always cherish the day when Thierry Njepang came into the commune. Njepang is a representative for a project financed by GenARDIS (Gender, Agriculture and Rural Development in the Information Society).

“We thought that in this fast-moving world, it was necessary to put at the disposal of these village communities, a communication tool, namely, the mobile telephone,” said Njepang.

GenARDIS has partnered with the SB Mathur Foundation in a project that is scheduled to last for six months. The projects intends to offer cellular phones to the women farmers in Santa district in the North West, and in Bangang, Bafoussam and Kamna districts in Cameroon’s West Region which they can employ to talk to trader in faraway markets and get all relevant information with respect to the produce they sell.

“We taught them how to make a call and how to send an SMS in order to get vital information in real time,” said Njepang.

“They were interested in knowing how much what they produced sold for in the national and international market; and how much farm inputs like fertilizers and pesticides cost; how much they could pay to get their produce to some markets and so on.”

The GenARDIS project conducted studies that aimed to identify specific communities of women farmers who live in Cameroon’s Western Highlands, as well as traders in the cities of Douala and Yaoundé, and further south, where the farmer’s crops which comprise mainly of maize and potatoes are finally sold.

The project kicked off with a preliminary survey that was directed towards finding out how the women made use of information and communications. The study revealed that though it was the men who had the final say on bigger purchases like cell phones or radios the products were invariably being used by their women.

However not a single lady who came under the purview of the survey had ever used these technologies to ever find out information about where their produce was being sold or at what prices. They never knew that these devices could be used to secure information related to farming, keep track of market information or get solutions from agricultural experts.

Understanding this they decided to launch a program which would educate the women about how useful a mobile phone could be when it came to being in touch with the people in cities who actually sell their produce and also did whatever was necessary to bring these people in touch with each other. Ma Theresa says the farmers were very fast in grasping the idea and were now aware of the part played by farm traders in depriving the ladies of the full benefits of the hard work that they had put in to yield such a good crop.

Theresa says that the high yielding potato seeds for which they were paying the middlemen around 40 cents for a kilo was actually being sold by the government at half the price.

The same story goes for other farm inputs as well and this became more so when the group could coordinate with each other for placing bulk orders for fertilizers. They were also able to use the same technology and communication channels to key in on some reliable contacts in these towns that could be trusted to find the most profitable offers for them.

“When people come from town claiming that the prices of foodstuffs have dropped in the market, I just make a phone call to the specific market to demonstrate that the person is telling a lie,” she says.

“Instead of giving away a 15-litre bucket of potatoes for the usual 2,000 CFA francs (a shade under $4), we will now only part with our potatoes at CFA 3000, because those who buy from us to sell in Yaoundé or Douala will get at least CFA 5,000 for them do so for at least CFA5000 ($10.6).”

Njepang proudly states that the project is slowly yet steadily moving towards giving these people better lives. “The systematic elimination of middlemen who used to exploit the farmers is effectively putting more money in the pockets of the farmers.”

There are however string criticism leveled against the project that it can only be short lived because the farmers do not have the income levels to be able to purchase a mobile phone of their own which is relatively expensive by average Cameroon standards.

Njepang however chooses to disagree on this stating that very few of the women who are part of the project had mobile phones during the six months pilot programme, and that the single phone could be used by all of them for purposes that served common benefits.

He also stated that the SB Mathur Foundation members have been continually motivating these women to keep a specific sum from the money that they make every week so that they can also over a certain period of time purchase their own mobile phones and this should not be too difficult considering that a basic model is available in the market for as less as 40 dollars.

“If you have a group of 20 women who decide that every week, each of them will contribute CFA 1000 ($2) and the pot will be used to purchase a cell phone for one of the members,” he says, “by the end of a month, four members would be mobile phone owners.” At the end of five months, all twenty will be proud owners of cell phones.

The fact as to how valuable this new found connectivity is crucial to these farmers is evident from the extent that they go to in using these phones. Many of them exist in areas where there is hardly any electric power forget cell phone coverage. But they walk to faraway places where they can find connectivity or power just so that they can make these calls and avoid being cheated by middlemen or just so that they can charge their batteries.

The project has created a very prominent change in the lives of the farmers belonging to over five districts.

“Rural farmers in these village communities are now increasingly using the mobile phone and other ICTs to access agricultural information,” said Njepang.