eKichabi v2: Designing and Scaling a Dual-Platform Agricultural Technology in Rural Tanzania
Abstract: Although farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa are accessing feature phones and smartphones at historically high rates, they face challenges finding a robust network of agricultural contacts. With collaborators, we conduct a quantitative survey of 1014 agricultural households in Kagera, Tanzania to characterize technology access, use, and comfort levels in the region. Recognizing the paucity of research on dual-platform technologies that cater to both feature phone and smartphone users, we develop and deploy eKichabi v2, a searchable directory of 9833 agriculture-related enterprises accessible via a USSD application and an Android application. To bridge the gap in affordances between the two applications, we conduct a mixed methods pilot leveraging mobile money agents as intermediators for our USSD application's users. Through our investigations, we identify the advantages, obstacles, and critical considerations in the design, implementation, and scalability of agricultural information systems tailored to both feature phone and smartphone users in Sub-Saharan Africa.
- Privacy in repair: An analysis of the privacy challenges surrounding broken digital artifacts in bangladesh. In Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development. ICTD: Information and Communication Technologies and Development, Ann Arbor, MI, USA, 1–10.
- Jenny C Aker. 2011. Dial “A” for agriculture: a review of information and communication technologies for agricultural extension in developing countries. Agricultural economics 42, 6 (2011), 631–647.
- Jenny C Aker and Joshua E Blumenstock. 2015. The economic impacts of new technologies in Africa. The Oxford handbook of Africa and economics 2 (2015), 354–371.
- The promise (and pitfalls) of ICT for agriculture initiatives. Agricultural Economics 47, S1 (2016), 35–48.
- Jenny C Aker and Isaac M Mbiti. 2010. Mobile phones and economic development in Africa. Journal of economic Perspectives 24, 3 (2010), 207–232.
- Online and Offline Android Based Mobile Application for Mapping Health Facilities Using Google Map API. Case Study: Tanzania and Kenya Borders. , 344–362 pages. https://doi.org/10.4236/jsea.2021.148021
- Two-factor authentication scheme for mobile money: A review of threat models and countermeasures. Future Internet 12, 10 (2020), 160.
- https://epar.evans.uw.edu/sites/default/files/UW_EPAR_Request_133_Tanzania_Agriculture_Background_03072011.pdf
- Cyber Security in Financial Sector Development: Challenges and Potential Solutions for Financial Inclusion.
- How Important is the Yellow Pages? Experimental Evidence from Tanzania. CEPR Discussion Papers 14489. C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers. https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/14489.html
- SuaCode Africa: Teaching Coding Online to Africans Using Smartphones. In Proceedings of the 10th Computer Science Education Research Conference (Virtual Event, Netherlands) (CSERC ’21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 14–20. https://doi.org/10.1145/3507923.3507928
- Marc BOURREAU and Tommaso VALLETTI. 2015. Competition and Interoperability in Mobile Money Platform Markets: What Works and What Doesn’t? Communications & Strategies 1, 99 (3rd quart 2015), 11–32. https://ideas.repec.org/a/idt/journl/cs9901.html
- Challenges and solutions implementing an SMS text message-based survey CASI and adherence reminders in an international biomedical HIV PrEP study (MTN 017). Journal of biomedical informatics 80 (2018), 78–86.
- P Bryan. 2021. Back in the ussd: most smartphones owners-especially women-don’t use apps for financial services. Retrieved from, nextbillion. net/ussd-smartphone-women-financial-services/on January 7 (2021), 1.
- Jenna Burrell and Elisa Oreglia. 2015. The myth of market price information: mobile phones and the application of economic knowledge in ICTD. Economy and Society 44, 2 (2015), 271–292.
- Age Differences in Problematic Mobile Phone Usage among Africans. In Proceedings of the 3rd African Human-Computer Interaction Conference: Inclusiveness and Empowerment (¡conf-loc¿, ¡city¿Maputo¡/city¿, ¡country¿Mozambique¡/country¿, ¡/conf-loc¿) (AfriCHI ’21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 12–21. https://doi.org/10.1145/3448696.3448705
- Sara Caputo. 2019. The pivotal role of mobile money agents in driving financial inclusion. GSMA. Retrieved November 13 (2019), 2021.
- SMS-based web search for low-end mobile devices. In Proceedings of the sixteenth annual international conference on Mobile computing and networking. Proceedings of the 16th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MOBICOM 2010), Chicago, IL, 125–136. https://doi.org/10.1145/1859995.1860011
- Pierre Courtois and Julie Subervie. 2015. Farmer bargaining power and market information services. American Journal of Agricultural Economics 97, 3 (2015), 953–977.
- Laurens Debo and Garrett van Ryzin. 2013. Leveraging quality information in stock-outs. Chicago Booth Research Paper 1, 13-58 (2013), 1–51.
- Statista Research Department. 2023. Number of M-pesa customers Africa 2017-2023. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1139190/m-pesa-customer-numbers/
- Brian Dillon and Chelsey Dambro. 2017. How Competitive Are Crop Markets in Sub-Saharan Africa? American Journal of Agricultural Economics 99 (2017), 1344 – 1361. https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:186200300
- Minding the Gaps: Cultural, Technical and Gender-Based Barriers to Mobile Use in Oral-Language Berber Communities in Morocco. In Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development: Full Papers - Volume 1 (Cape Town, South Africa) (ICTD ’13). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 79–88. https://doi.org/10.1145/2516604.2516626
- The next digital finance frontier: Filling the accounts.
- Marcel Fafchamps and Bart Minten. 2012. Impact of SMS-based agricultural information on Indian farmers. The World Bank Economic Review 26, 3 (2012), 383–414.
- FAO and ITU. 2022. STATUS OF DIGITAL AGRICULTURE IN 47 SUB-SAHARAN AFRICAN COUNTRIES. https://www.fao.org/3/cb7943en/cb7943en.pdf
- Ugani Kiganjani- All the extension agricultural services in your hands. https://www.fao.org/documents/card/en?details=CB4732EN%2F
- Initial experience in monitoring QT intervals using a six-lead contactless mobile electrocardiogram in an inpatient setting. The Journal of Innovations in Cardiac Rhythm Management 12, 3 (2021), 4433.
- Usability of mobile applications: literature review and rationale for a new usability model. Journal of Interaction Science 1 (2013), 1–16.
- GSMA Intelligence. 2021. The Mobile Economy Sub-Saharan Africa 2021. Technical Report. GSM Association. https://www.gsma.com/mobileeconomy/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/GSMA_ME_SSA_2021_English_Web_Singles.pdf
- The impact of mobile telephony on developing country micro-enterprise: A Nigerian case study. Information Technologies & International Development 4, 4 (2008), pp–47.
- Alsen Florian Kapinga and Calkin Suero Montero. 2017. Exploring the socio-cultural challenges of food processing women entrepreneurs in IRINGA, TANZANIA and strategies used to tackle them. Journal of Global Entrepreneurship Research 7, 1 (2017), 17. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40497-017-0076-0
- Leveraging Intermediated Interactions to Support Utilization of Persuasive Personal Health Informatics. In Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (Ann Arbor, MI, USA) (ICTD ’16). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 19, 11 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/2909609.2909664
- Lorna Katusiime. 2021. Mobile money use: The impact of macroeconomic policy and regulation. Economies 9, 2 (2021), 51.
- Sukhpreet Kaur and Kanwalvir Dhindsa. 2018. Comparative Study of Android-Based M-Apps for Farmers. International Conference on Intelligent Computing and Applications, Chennai, India, 173–183. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5520-1_17
- D.K Kiambi. 2018. The use of Information Communication and Technology in advancement of African agriculture. African Journal of Agricultural Research 13 (09 2018), 2025–2036. https://doi.org/10.5897/AJAR2018.13300
- Seeing is believing? Evidence from an extension network experiment. Journal of Development Economics 125 (2017), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2016.10.004
- Neha Kumar and Richard J. Anderson. 2015. Mobile Phones for Maternal Health in Rural India. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Seoul, Republic of Korea) (CHI ’15). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 427–436. https://doi.org/10.1145/2702123.2702258
- Roosa Lambin and Milla Nyyssölä. 2022. Employment policy in Mainland Tanzania: what’s in it for women? WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2022-67. World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER). https://ideas.repec.org/p/unu/wpaper/wp-2022-67.html
- Vivienne A Lawack. 2012. Mobile money, financial inclusion and financial integrity: The South African case. Wash. JL Tech. & Arts 8 (2012), 317.
- Evaluation of IVR Data Collection UIs for Untrained Rural Users. In Proceedings of the First ACM Symposium on Computing for Development (London, United Kingdom) (ACM DEV ’10). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 2, 8 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/1926180.1926183
- Criminal uses of information & communication technologies in sub-Saharan Africa: trends, concerns and perspectives. Journal of Information Technology Impact 9, 3 (2009), 155–172.
- Access to Agricultural Market Information by Rural Farmers in Tanzania. International Journal of Information and Communication Technology Research 4 (07 2014), 264–273.
- Mawazo Mwita Magesa and Noah Nasson Mkasanga. 2021. Smallholder farmers’ willingness to pay for access to agricultural market information in Tanzania. Agrekon 60, 4 (2021), 424–444.
- Brandie Lee Martin and Eric Abbott. 2011. Mobile phones and rural livelihoods: Diffusion, uses, and perceived impacts among farmers in rural Uganda. Information Technologies & International Development 7, 4 (2011), pp–17.
- Robert Mashenene. 2014. The Effects of Socio-Cultural Factors on the Performance of Women Small and Medium Enterprises in Tanzania. Journal of Economics 5 (01 2014), 51–62.
- Development and implementation of culturally tailored offline mobile health surveys. JMIR public health and surveillance 2, 1 (2016), e5408.
- Designing mobile interfaces for novice and low-literacy users. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI) 18, 1 (2011), 1–28.
- Prayana: Intermediated Financial Management in Resource-Constrained Settings. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (, Montreal QC, Canada,) (CHI ’18). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3173963
- Smartphone Applications Targeting Precision Agriculture Practices—A Systematic Review. Agronomy 10, 6 (2020), 1 pages. https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy10060855
- Towards a digital money structure for illiterate users. , 10 pages.
- Design Lessons from Creating a Mobile-Based Community Media Platform in Rural India. In Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (Ann Arbor, MI, USA) (ICTD ’16). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 14, 11 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/2909609.2909670
- Mobile phones and poverty alleviation: A survey study in rural Tanzania. Proceedings of 1st International Conference on M4D Mobile Communication Technology for Development 1 (01 2008), 62–72.
- Grace EP Msoffe and Edda Tandi Lwoga. 2019. Contribution of mobile phones in expanding human capabilities in selected rural districts of Tanzania. Global Knowledge, Memory and Communication 68, 6/7 (2019), 491–503.
- San Murugesan. 2013. Mobile apps in Africa. IT Professional 15, 5 (2013), 8–11.
- Digital technology and services for sustainable agriculture in Tanzania: A literature review. Sustainability 14, 4 (2022), 2415.
- Kelefa Mwantimwa. 2019. ICT usage to enhance firms’ business processes in Tanzania. Journal of Global Entrepreneurship Research 9, 1 (2019), 46.
- Designing and implementing an innovative SMS-based alert system (RapidSMS-MCH) to monitor pregnancy and reduce maternal and child deaths in Rwanda. The Pan African Medical Journal 13 (2012), 1–15.
- Exploring Tensions of Global Public Good Platforms for Development: The Case of DHIS2. In Information and Communication Technologies for Development. Strengthening Southern-Driven Cooperation as a Catalyst for ICT4D, Petter Nielsen and Honest Christopher Kimaro (Eds.). Springer International Publishing, Cham, 207–217.
- Communication Statistics - A Report for a Quarter ending September 2022. https://www.tcra.go.tz/uploads/text-editor/files/1st%20Quarter%20Statisctics%20Report%20for%202022-REVISED%20FINAL%201.11.2022_1667386626.pdf
- Pfavai Nyajeka and Richard Duncombe. 2023. The Use of Mobile Phones by Women Livestock Keepers in Zimbabwe. In Proceedings of the 2022 International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (Seattle, WA, USA) (ICTD ’22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 29, 11 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3572334.3572401
- Siwel Yohakim Nyamba. 2021. Socio-Economic Characteristics Enhancing Farmers’ Use of Mobile Phones to Access Agricultural Information in Tanzania. International Journal of Agricultural Science, Research and Technology in Extension and Education Systems (IJASRT in EES) 11, 3 (2021), 181–191.
- How Technology Supports Family Communication in Rural, Suburban, and Urban Kenya. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Toronto, Ontario, Canada) (CHI ’14). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 2705–2714. https://doi.org/10.1145/2556288.2557277
- National Bureau of Statistics. 2019. National Sample Census of Agriculture 2019/20, Public Use File. Available: https://www.nbs.go.tz/tnada (Accessed: 6 August 2023). Ref.TZA-NBS-NSCA-2019-v01.
- Towards an Effective Digital Literacy Intervention to Assist Returning Citizens with Job Search. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Glasgow, Scotland Uk) (CHI ’19). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300315
- Ragnhild Overå. 2006. Networks, distance, and trust: Telecommunications development and changing trading practices in Ghana. World development 34, 7 (2006), 1301–1315.
- J.S. Parikh and Kaushik Ghosh. 2006a. Understanding and designing for intermediated information tasks in India. IEEE Pervasive Computing 5, 2 (2006), 32–39. https://doi.org/10.1109/MPRV.2006.41
- JS Parikh and Kaushik Ghosh. 2006b. Understanding and designing for intermediated information tasks in India. IEEE Pervasive Computing 5, 2 (2006), 32–39.
- USSD: The Third Universal App. In Proceedings of the 2015 Annual Symposium on Computing for Development (London, United Kingdom) (DEV ’15). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 13–21. https://doi.org/10.1145/2830629.2830645
- User Errors in SMS Based Reporting Systems. In Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (Singapore, Singapore) (ICTD ’15). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 55, 4 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/2737856.2737877
- Usability Studies on Mobile User Interface Design Patterns: A Systematic Literature Review. Adv. in Hum.-Comp. Int. 2017 (jan 2017), 22 pages. https://doi.org/10.1155/2017/6787504
- Mobile phone use is associated with higher smallholder agricultural productivity in Tanzania, East Africa. PloS one 15, 8 (2020), e0237337.
- Beyond Digital Financial Services: Exploring Mobile Money Agents in Tanzania as General ICT Intermediaries. ACM J. Comput. Sustain. Soc. 1, 1 (sep 2023), 25 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3616386 Just Accepted.
- From Grasshoppers to Secondhand Cars: Understanding the Smartphone-Enabled Marketplace in Peri-urban Tanzania. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. CHI 2023, Hamburg, Germany, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3580647
- Dakter Bari: Introducing Intermediary to Ensure Healthcare Services to Extremely Impoverished People. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 5, CSCW1 (2021), 1–30.
- Mobile-Izing Health Workers in Rural India. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Atlanta, Georgia, USA) (CHI ’10). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1889–1898. https://doi.org/10.1145/1753326.1753610
- Research and Reality: Using Mobile Messages to Promote Maternal Health in Rural India. In Proceedings of the 4th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (London, United Kingdom) (ICTD ’10). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 35, 10 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/2369220.2369253
- How to Sustainably Feed 10 Billion People by 2050, in 21 Charts. https://www.wri.org/insights/how-sustainably-feed-10-billion-people-2050-21-charts
- Gwahula Raphael. 2016. Risks and barriers associated with mobile money transactions in Tanzania. Business Management and Strategy 7, 2 (2016), 121.
- Mohit Saini. 2017. Designing User-Friendly USSD Interface for Digital Financial Services. https://www.microsave.net/2017/04/07/designing-user-friendly-ussd-interface-for-digital-financial-services/
- Intermediated Technology Use in Developing Communities. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Atlanta, Georgia, USA) (CHI ’10). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 2583–2592. https://doi.org/10.1145/1753326.1753718
- Nithya Sambasivan and Thomas Smyth. 2010. The Human Infrastructure of ICTD. In Proceedings of the 4th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (London, United Kingdom) (ICTD ’10). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 40, 9 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/2369220.2369258
- Mobile learning bridging the gap in agricultural extension service delivery: Experiences from Sokoine University of Agriculture, Tanzania. International Journal of Education and Development using ICT 12, 3 (2016), 109–127.
- Electronic Citizen Service Delivery, MeeSeva - Telangana State, India. In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance (Melbourne, VIC, Australia) (ICEGOV ’19). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 441–445. https://doi.org/10.1145/3326365.3326423
- Mobile Search with Text Messages: Designing the User Experience for Google SMS. In CHI ’05 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Portland, OR, USA) (CHI EA ’05). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1777–1780. https://doi.org/10.1145/1056808.1057020
- Laura Silver and Courtney Johnson. 2018. Internet connectivity seen as having positive impact on life in Sub-Saharan Africa. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2018/10/09/internet-connectivity-seen-as-having-positive-impact-on-life-in-sub-saharan-africa/
- The Mobile Divide Revisited: Mobile Phone Use by Smallholder Farmers in Malawi. In Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (Singapore, Singapore) (ICTD ’15). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 8, 9 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/2737856.2738022
- Designing a Financial Management Smartphone App for Users with Mixed Literacies. In Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (Ahmedabad, India) (ICTD ’19). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 35, 5 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3287098.3287131
- The impact of authentic learning experiences with ICT on pre-service teachers’ intentions to use ICT for teaching and learning. Computers & Education 81 (2015), 49–58.
- Unlikely Actors: Religious Organizations as Intermediaries in Indonesia. In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Social Implications of Computers in Developing Countries. Catholic Relief Services, São Paulo, Brazil, 22–25. https://fathulwahid.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/unlikely-actors.pdf
- EKichabi: Information Access through Basic Mobile Phones in Rural Tanzania. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (, Montreal QC, Canada,) (CHI ’18). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3173707
- ”If God Gives Me the Chance i Will Design My Own Phone”: Exploring Mobile Phone Repair and Postcolonial Approaches to Design in Rural Kenya. In Proceedings of the 2015 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (Osaka, Japan) (UbiComp ’15). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 463–473. https://doi.org/10.1145/2750858.2804249
- Mobile phones as amplifiers of social inequality among rural Kenyan women. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI) 23, 3 (2016), 1–19.
- Susan Wyche and Charles Steinfield. 2016. Why don’t farmers use cell phones to access market prices? Technology affordances and barriers to market information services adoption in rural Kenya. Information Technology for Development 22, 2 (2016), 320–333.
- Real Mobiles: Kenyan and Zambian Smallholder Farmers’ Current Attitudes towards Mobile Phones. In Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (Singapore, Singapore) (ICTD ’15). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 9, 10 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/2737856.2738013
- Susan P. Wyche and Laura L. Murphy. 2012. ”Dead China-Make” Phones off the Grid: Investigating and Designing for Mobile Phone Use in Rural Africa. In Proceedings of the Designing Interactive Systems Conference (Newcastle Upon Tyne, United Kingdom) (DIS ’12). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 186–195. https://doi.org/10.1145/2317956.2317985
- Susan P. Wyche and Laura L. Murphy. 2013. Powering the Cellphone Revolution: Findings from Mobile Phone Charging Trials in off-Grid Kenya. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Paris, France) (CHI ’13). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1959–1968. https://doi.org/10.1145/2470654.2466260
- Deciphering Mobile Search Patterns: A Study of Yahoo! Mobile Search Queries. In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on World Wide Web (Beijing, China) (WWW ’08). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 257–266. https://doi.org/10.1145/1367497.1367533
- Operability, acceptability, and usefulness of a mobile app to track routine immunization performance in rural Pakistan: interview study among vaccinators and key informants. JMIR mHealth and uHealth 8, 2 (2020), e16081.
Paper Prompts
Sign up for free to create and run prompts on this paper using GPT-5.
Top Community Prompts
Collections
Sign up for free to add this paper to one or more collections.