Prospects of Cloud and Mobile Computing Adoption for Dissemination

of Agricultural Information in Developing Countries

Edore Akpokodje and Chris Price

Computer Science Dept., Aberystwyth University, Wales, U.K.

1 RESEARCH PROBLEM

Timely access to agricultural information by farmers

is critical to agricultural productivity. ICT has the

potential of improving agricultural information deliv-

ery and farmers productivity. Most developing coun-

tries however lack both the resources and the expertise

to build and maintain many data centres distributed

around the country. These countries have to look

for other ways to access Information and Communi-

cations Technology infrastructure and services. This

research investigates whether cloud computing com-

bined with mobile computing provides an efﬁcient,

effective, sustainable way of bridging this digital di-

vide between developed and developing countries, de-

livering appropriate expertise to remote areas.

2 OUTLINE OF OBJECTIVES

• To determine the status of mobile computing in

Nigeria while reviewing the trends in mobile com-

puting based extension delivery for farmers.

• To assess farmers perception of the present level

of interaction between farmers and extension

agencies in Nigeria in relation to the level of sup-

port given to the farmers via farm/extension infor-

mation delivery.

• To determine the prospects of leveraging cloud

and mobile computing to deliver support to farm-

ers by deploying low tech web solutions via fea-

ture phones.

• To evaluate the impact of these low tech web so-

lutions on farmers’ productivity.

3 METHODOLOGY

Analysis of documentary sources about access to

telecommunication and Internet services by Nigeri-

ans especially rural farmers will be conducted. All

the 37 Agricultural Development Agencies (ADPs)

and farmers in Nigeria will form the population of this

study. The country will be divided into ﬁve Geo eco-

logical zones. A convenience sample will be used to

select one ADP each from the North West, North Cen-

tral and from the South West Geo ecological Zones.

The North East and the South East Geo ecological

zones are presently experiencing security threats and

will not be surveyed. It is hoped however that if the

conditions permit a survey will be conducted in these

zones at a later date. One hundred (100) farmers;

ﬁfty (50) from the rural areas and ﬁfty (50) from ur-

ban areas will be selected from each of the surveyed

ADP states using a simple random sample. A semi

- structured Interview schedule will be used to elicit

responses from the ADPs and a structured and semi

structured questionnaire schedule will be adminis-

tered to the farmers. A thematic analysis will be done

on the qualitative data collated from the interviews to

determine common trends and goals. The data from

the questionnaire will be analyzed using descriptive

statistics and other appropriate statistical tools. Low-

tech web service solutions will be developed to lever-

age existing cloud computing, mobile computing in-

frastructure and feature phones. This low tech web

service will be deployed in the areas surveyed. A fur-

ther survey will be conducted to evaluate the impact

of these low-tech web service solutions on the pro-

ductivity of farmers.

4 STATE OF THE ART

4.1 Introduction

Within the past two decades there has been a burst of

research activities in the area of agriculture in Nige-

rian universities and agricultural research centres. Far

reaching innovations that are capable of boosting the

small scale farmer’s agricultural production and Nige-

ria’s economic development have been discovered.

Unfortunately these have not had a correspond-

Akpokodje, E. and Price, C.

Prospects of Cloud and Mobile Computing Adoption for Dissemination of Agricultural Information in Developing Countries.

In Doctoral Consortium (DCCLOSER 2016), pages 3-8

ing effect of improved agricultural productivity due to

the poor dissemination and adoption of these ﬁndings.

According to (Madukwe et al., 2002) , effective in-

tegration of communication elements, enhances sus-

tainability in communication of ideas and consequent

transfer of agricultural technology to farmers.

Information is an essential ingredient in agricul-

tural development programs but Nigerian farmers sel-

dom feel the impact of agricultural

4.2 Agricultural Extension Delivery in

Nigeria

The Agricultural extension system in Nigeria has

been beset by a myriad of problems. According

to (Agbamu, 2005) these problems include inade-

quate agricultural research extension linkages, poorly

trained extension workers at the local level, poor lo-

gistic support for ﬁeld staff, inadequate funding for

extension services, inappropriate and ineffective agri-

cultural technologies for farmers. Other problems

include inability to access extension services espe-

cially in small towns, villages and farm settlements,

ill equipped extension agents, difﬁcult access espe-

cially in rural areas and general apathy towards ex-

tension services.

The government has tried to resolve these prob-

lems by introducing several agricultural extension

agencies at state and Federal level. They include

the Agricultural Development Project (ADP) which

was established in 1975 (Olujenyo, 2006) to improve

agricultural information dissemination to farmers es-

pecially small-holder and rural farmers. There are

presently 37 ADPs; one in each of the 36 states and

one in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. Many

agricultural based universities and research agencies

have some form of agricultural extension service. The

Federal Government also established the Agricultural

Extension and Research Liaison Services with the

mandate to develop and disseminate agricultural in-

novations to farmers. They are also involved in re-

search into new agricultural extension methodologies

and policy. There is also a lot of collaboration be-

tween all these agricultural extension agencies.

4.3 Agricultural Development Project

(ADP)

ADPs started as a World Bank intervention in 1975/76

in three Northern Nigeria towns namely Funtua,

Gusau and Gombe . It later spread to other states.

It was established to boost the agricultural production

of small holder farmers as well as improve their so-

cio economic status and food security of the nation.

It was established as a joint state and federal govern-

ment collaboration to improve extension services and

to provide a robust monitoring system of small holder

farmers and their activities.

The ADP programme has recorded signiﬁcant

success in the area of revitalizing the extension ser-

vices in Nigeria, It has also brought about the dissemi-

nation of much needed technological transfer to farm-

ers. It has however been plagued by lots of problems

ranging from political manipulation, corruption, high

turnover of staff and rivalry between the states and

the federal government, inefﬁcient tools for informa-

tion dissemination, restricted access to small holder

farmers etc.

In recent years the ADPs have been actively in-

volved in the success of the e-wallet approach of the

Nigerian government. ADPs supplied 3-5 helpline

staff per local government (Adebo, 2014) who con-

nected to the farmers daily to help to resolve issues.

However, in a study conducted by (Obidike,

2011), some of the problems encountered by rural

farmers in Nsukka L.G.A. of Enugu State, Nigeria

served by an ADP include lack of access roads for

regular visits by extension ofﬁcers, poor public re-

lation of some extension staff, poor radio and tele-

vision signals, non-availability of electricity supply

in most Nsukka villages, lack of funds to purchase

newsletters, leaﬂets on agricultural information; il-

literacy and inability of radio and television stations

in Enugu State to broadcast agricultural informa-

tion programmes in native Nsukka dialect. These

problems are also experienced by most rural farmers

served by ADPs throughout Nigeria.

The ADP’s are the major agents for information

dissemination to farmers in Nigeria. It has become

therefore become imperative that their methods of dis-

seminating information be improved. ICT?s can be

exploited for this purpose.

4.4 Mobile Computing Access in

Nigeria

Sub-Saharan Africa had 367 million unique sub-

scribers and 680 million connections by the second

quarter of 2015 (Association et al., 2015). Nigeria

remains the largest mobile market in Africa and as

at 2014 had 145 million subscribers, 2.4 sims per

subscriber, 58 million unique subscribers, 80 percent

penetration rate for all subscribers, 32 percent pene-

tration rate for unique subscribers and an annual sub-

scriber growth of 18 percent in 2014 (Intelligence,

2014).

DCCLOSER 2016 - Doctoral Consortium on Cloud Computing and Services Science

Table 1: Key mobile indicators for Nigeria 2010 -2014

Source(Intelligence, 2014).

According to (Intelligence, 2014) (Intelligence,

2014), while a 70 percent mobile connections pene-

tration would paint a picture of a well-connected mar-

ket, the actual penetration on a unique subscriber (e.g.

human user) basis is more sobering, with many sub-

scribers having several SIMs with different providers

to give adequate coverage. The problem of mobile

coverage is more glaring when viewing mobile ac-

cess from the urban and rural perspective. According

to (Intelligence, 2014), the Nigerian population dis-

tribution has a 50:50 ratio for rural and urban centres

with a 24 percent subscriber penetration for rural ar-

eas and a 34 percent subscriber penetration for urban

areas.

The apparently low unique subscriber challenge

has been mitigated by high household access. Many

individuals have arranged sharing of mobile phones

especially in rural areas among lower income pop-

ulations, and mobile phone penetration has become

near ubiquitous (only radio is more widespread), with

broadcast TV still behind, and PCs lower still as

a result of a paucity of ﬁxed broadband infrastruc-

ture(Intelligence, 2014).

Some of the major causes of the low penetration of

mobile telephony in rural Nigeria include bad roads,

security problems especially in the North east re-

gion, tough geographic terrain especially in the Niger

Delta, vast distances in the North, poor electricity

supply, low investment in rural coverage (including

new sites and backhaul). Despite these challenges the

regulator set a goal of 60 percent rural penetration by

2015, with an increase to universal levels by 2017 (In-

telligence, 2014).

As cellular networks become increasingly mature

and reliable, Nigerian consumers are having faster

and better access to the Internet using their mobile

phones without the need for broadband or a computer

at home. This positive development has been identi-

Figure 1: Gap in rural vs urban mobile telephony penetra-

tion Source:(Intelligence, 2014).

Figure 2: Phone type ownership in Nigeria and Frequency

of Internet visits Per phone type Source: (Intelligence,

2014).

ﬁed as a key driver for a range of applications that will

support Cloud computing (Dogo et al., 2013). How-

ever, at the lower end of the market, and especially in

rural areas, much of the use of mobile Internet is done

from feature phones. This makes it imperative to state

that any program to leverage mobile access for agri-

culture has to take the issue of the widespread use of

feature phones into consideration.

4.5 ICT and Agricultural Information

Delivery in Developing Countries

Agricultural extension services in most developing

countries have not been as effective as in devel-

oped countries. This has had serious implications on

the productivity of the average farmer in a develop-

ing country. Information Communications Technol-

ogy (ICT) has been deployed successfully in agri-

cultural information delivery. The fast acceptance

and widespread nature of mobile telephony has con-

tributed immensely to this success.

4.5.1 Mobile Telephony: Improving Access to

Agricultural Information

Most farmers live in rural areas which are largely

under-served by ICT infrastructure like Internet ser-

vices, broadband connection and telecommunications

services. This has made the delivery of farm infor-

Prospects of Cloud and Mobile Computing Adoption for Dissemination of Agricultural Information in Developing Countries

mation via mobile phones challenging; but there have

been promising pilots in Nigeria in this area.

4.5.2 The Electronic Wallet (e-wallet) Approach

for Small Holder Farmers in Nigeria

The Electronic Wallet (e-wallet) approach which was

started in 2012 facilitates the distribution of seeds, fer-

tilizer and other agricultural inputs directly to small

scale farmers. In a study of three sample sets of farm-

ers conducted by (Adebo, 2014) on the e-wallet ap-

proach in Kwara State, Nigeria, 53.5 percent, 51.0

percent and 87.2 percent of the respondents? respec-

tively beneﬁted from improved seeds of maize, rice

and two bags of fertilizers each.

This program has helped to eliminate corruption

and has improved access to timely farm inputs which

is critical to improved productivity. In Nigeria as a

whole the number of farmers with access to the e-

wallet system grew from 1.7million in 2012 to 5 mil-

lion in 2013 (Association et al., 2015).

The e-wallet approach provides direct linkage be-

tween the farmers and the government which en-

ables government to distribute valuable information to

farmers and provide support for the program.(Adebo,

2014) identiﬁed some challenges to the system to in-

clude telephony network failure, low level of aware-

ness among farmers, cumbersome procedure of get-

ting approval from the mobile provider, low density

coverage of agro-dealers, and supply of fertilizer and

maize seeds.

Despite its challenges the e-wallet approach has

proven to be an effective example of the application of

mobile telephony in improving access to agricultural

information and inputs which have a direct effect on

agricultural productivity.

4.6 Use of Web Services in Agriculture

A pilot study conducted in Ago-Are village in Oyo

State, Nigeria provided access to farming informa-

tion through an integrated resource centre in which in-

formation and communication technologies including

the internet provided communication links for farm-

ers (Adekunle et al., 2006).

The results after 18 months showed that yield per

hectare for maize increased from 1.05 to 2.46 tons.

The average income per annum of the farmers in-

creased from 437USD to 3,285USD. There was an

increase in fertilizer usage from an average of 22 per-

cent of recommended rate to an average of 62 percent

of the recommended rate. The increased income from

the improved productivity of farmers also had an im-

pact on their farm holding rate which increased from

2.22 ha to 3.76 ha.

The results of the study have shown that proper

application of ICT, Internet and Web services can

have a great impact in delivery of agricultural infor-

mation to farmers with the ripple effect of increasing

farm productivity and income.

4.7 Wider Application of Web Services

to Support Farmers in Developing

Countries

Most farmers live in rural areas which are largely

underserved by ICT infrastructure like Internet ser-

vices, broadband connection and telecommunications

services. The recent upsurge in mobile telephone ac-

tivities in developing countries and the vast coverage

of mobile telephony services in developing countries

provides an opportunity to improve access to agricul-

tural extension services by rural farmers in develop-

ing countries. Many developing countries in collab-

oration with developmental agencies have begun to

leverage this new found tool to improve access and

ultimately improve productivity of rural farmers. Two

good examples of the use of are:

4.7.1 Esoko

Esoko is an agricultural information advisory service

that provides farmers advice i.e weather forecasts,

market prices etc . It is a communication tool that

links farmers with government agencies, NGOs and

other farming support agencies. Esoko is an offshoot

of TradeNet which was formed in 2005 as a response

to the need to give farmers access to market informa-

tion that was being collected by the Ugandan govern-

ment. It was formed out of the need to adapt tech-

nology to resolve communication gaps being experi-

enced by farmers.

Esoko comprises 16 apps which are grouped into

the following categories: Market apps, Monitoring

apps, Advisory apps and Field services.

• Market apps ?These apps are used to send SMS

messages that link farmers and sellers to each

other and that provide for improved access by

farmers to market information and prospective

customers.

• Monitoring apps? These apps provide survey in-

formation to both farmers and agricultural agen-

cies throughout the entire agricultural value chain.

This survey information can then be used to

provide a clearer picture of what is happening

throughout the agricultural value chain.

• Monitoring apps? These apps provide survey in-

formation to both farmers and agricultural agen-

cies throughout the entire agricultural value chain.

DCCLOSER 2016 - Doctoral Consortium on Cloud Computing and Services Science

This survey information can then be used to

provide a clearer picture of what is happening

throughout the agricultural value chain.

• Field Services ? Provides tools to support on-site

training for farmers, extension agencies and also

provides helplines and technical support via call-

center services.

4.7.2 Ezaraat

Ezaraat is a Management Information System ap-

plication that has both a web and a mobile inter-

face. It also supports help-line facilities. The Ezaraat

project was developed by the Centre for Agriculture

Bioscience International (CABI) with funding from

the UK Department for International Development

(DFID) to improve the reach of extension services in

Punjab district of Pakistan.

The system comprises a mobile interface for farm-

ers and extension agencies and a web based inter-

face for institutional users. The hub of the system

is a communication centre which links the farmers

and extension agencies via a mobile interface and the

agricultural agencies and other institutions via a web

based interface. A farmer sends queries for weather

information, fertilizer availability and other exten-

sion based information. These queries are routed to

the extension agents on the ﬁeld via the information

communication centre. The communication centre

is supported by a database for farmer and agricul-

tural related information. The extension agents pro-

vide answers to farmers queries based on information

they have retrieved from the ﬁeld and supporting in-

formation from the communication centre database.

Queries that cannot be answered by the extension

agencies are sent to expert panels on the particular

area of expertise via conference call facilitated by the

call entered connected to the communication centre.

4.8 Potentials of Cloud Computing for

Agricultural Information Delivery

Cloud Computing (CC) is deﬁned by (Mell and

Grance, 2011) as a model for enabling ubiquitous,

convenient, on-demand network access to a shared

pool of conﬁgurable computing resources (e.g. net-

works, servers, storage, applications, and services)

that can be rapidly provisioned and realized with min-

imal management effort or service provider interac-

tion?. It is useful in developing countries, grappling

with the problem of inadequate on-site ICT Infras-

tructure caused by limited resources to build robust

Data Centres and manage them appropriately. CC

has the potential to provide a quicker, cheaper way

of bridging the digital divide that has developed be-

tween developed and developing countries, and could

provide developing countries with the necessary tools

to exploit the potentials of the information revolution.

There are many existing factors that will support

the adoption of CC in Nigeria but the major ones are,

namely; recent revolution in mobile technology, avail-

ability of skilled manpower, high volume of research

in this novel area and the sudden inﬂux of multina-

tional data players in Nigeria seeking to invest due to

the huge opportunities on ground (Dogo et al., 2013).

The recent drop in oil prices which provides most

of Nigeria?s revenue has made it more imperative to

look to other sectors of the economy to drive develop-

ment and job creation. ICT based agriculture has the

potential to improve the economy and create jobs.

According to (Ballantyne et al., 2010), the use of

ICT to connect farmers and producers to new agri-

cultural knowledge and technology has been tested

and found very useful, to the extent that ICT is now

considered to be transforming agricultural extension.

Cloud Computing provides a leap forward in agricul-

tural development if properly applied, enabling sus-

tainable and optimised utilization of these comput-

ing resources for agricultural extension information

delivery. It also provides for networking between

farmers and extension agencies even across large geo-

graphical areas. These cloud based resources could be

scaled to meet the particular computing need of farm-

ers and extension agencies on demand and at minimal

cost. It will enable the extension agencies to focus

on their core mandate of agricultural extension deliv-

ery rather than managing computer resources. The

combination of cloud and mobile technologies would

reduce the expenditure on information delivery and

monitoring by extension agencies, while increasing

the overall coverage of farmers by these agencies.

More farmers can be reached on time at less cost

and risk to human life with mobile phones. Presently

most extension agencies in Nigeria have to deploy ex-

tension agents to remote areas at great cost and high

risk. This is much more challenging in ﬂash points

like the North east. Data ranging from location infor-

mation and other farmer speciﬁc information can also

be easily collected from the ﬁeld promptly and regu-

larly. This information alongside with location spe-

ciﬁc information like weather information etc can be

very critical to the productivity of farmers. This infor-

mation can also be analysed on the Cloud at minimal

cost to the extension agencies. The Cloud could also

provide data storage which can be scaled on-demand.

This data store could serve as pooled information to

aid improved information delivery based on analysed

results. Farmers? activities and progress can also be

Prospects of Cloud and Mobile Computing Adoption for Dissemination of Agricultural Information in Developing Countries

monitored by extension agents much more regularly.

(Dogo et al., 2013) while acknowledging the eco-

nomic and operational beneﬁts of CC cautioned that

security, privacy, trust and data integrity remain the

major concerns slowing down its adoption by gov-

ernments, ﬁnancial institutions, ICT ﬁrms, Industry

and researchers in Nigeria.(Dogo et al., 2013) also

implicated other challenges to the adoption of CC in

Nigeria to range from ownership and security of data

and information on the cloud, Internet availability, un-

stable power supply, policy implications arising from

implementing cloud services, litigations and legisla-

tion on data ownership in the cloud and infringement

rights, interoperability and international legislation.

5 EXPECTED OUTCOME

The present trends and status of mobile computing ac-

cess especially for rural farmers would be determined.

The present level of support given to farmers by ex-

tension agencies would also be assessed. The feasibil-

ity of introducing low-tech web service solutions that

would signiﬁcantly improve the productivity of farm-

ers in Nigeria would be explored. Appropriate low-

tech web service solutions to enable access to cloud

based services via feature phones by the farmers will

then be developed. These web services will be de-

ployed and made available to farmers. The results

of this deployment will be monitored to determine its

impact on the productivity of farmers. This project

will provide a framework for the utilization of cloud

based resources by farmers in developing countries.

6 STAGE OF THE RESEARCH

I am presently doing a literature review of the con-

cepts and present developments that underpin this

project. They include an understudy of the status

of mobile computing in Nigeria while reviewing the

trends in mobile computing based extension deliv-

ery for farmers. The present cost of access to mo-

bile networks and the penetration especially in ru-

ral areas will be investigated. A one month survey

of agricultural agencies and farmers they serve will

be conducted shortly in Nigeria. This study will as-

sess farmers perception of the present level of inter-

action between them and the extension agencies in re-

lation to the level of support given to the farmers via

farm/extension information delivery. The information

gained will be used to determine the kind of solution

to be designed and the deployment model that will be

highly beneﬁcial to the majority of farmers in those

areas and by extension the whole country.

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DCCLOSER 2016 - Doctoral Consortium on Cloud Computing and Services Science