Digital Media and Wireless Communications in Developing Nations

Agriculture, Education, and the Economic Sector

Megh R. Goyal, Emmanuel Eilu, Megh R. Goyal, Emmanuel Eilu

• Éditeur: Apple Academic Press
• Année: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429639425
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Business
• Sous-sujet: Business Communication

Digital Media and Wireless Communication in Developing Nations: Agriculture, Education, and the Economic Sector explores how digital media and wireless communication, especially mobile phones and social media platforms, offer concrete opportunities for developing countries to transform different sectors of their economies. The volume focuses on the agricultural, economic, and education sectors. The chapter authors, mostly from Africa and India, provide a wealth of information on recent innovations, the opportunities they provide, challenges faced, and the direction of future research in digital media and wireless communication to leverage transformation in developing countries.

The volume provides important research on digital media and wireless communication within the context of developing countries that will be very useful for professionals from academia, government agencies, NGOs, technologists, entrepreneurs and investors, and others.

PART I
Potential Use of Mobile Phones and
Social Media in Agriculture

CHAPTER 1

Potential of Mobile Phones as a Disruptive and Transformative Tool

HECTOR JOHN MONGI and ALFRED SAID SIFE

ABSTRACT

Mobile technology has become ubiquitous in developing countries, where the rate of user penetration is amazing. The context of this booming tool has led to the emergence of two buzz words: disruptive and transformative technology. This chapter presents and discusses the results where the disruptive and transformative power of mobile phone was studied in the Lake Victoria Basin (LVB) of Tanzania. The study applied the context lens of selected small-scale Formalized Farmers Organizations at the bottom of the pyramid of the Tanzanian management structure of LVB. A theoretical approach that linked tool, activity, and goal was used to guide the study. Findings are used to discuss the mobile phone as a disruptive technology and as a tool for bringing faster transformation in the social, economic, and ecological dimensions of sustainable small-scale agriculture in the study area.

1.1 INTRODUCTION

Penetration and usage of mobile phones in the developing countries is amazing. The comparisons made on mobile phone user penetration between developed and developing economies in the world showed that the former had a significant leap into the better position.³⁴ For example, according to the 2015 estimates by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), 96 own mobile phones for every 100 global citizens.¹⁸ Much of this data results from rapid penetration in China and India, homes to more than a third of the global population.⁴³ Apart from the general trends, user penetration rate of smart phones has shown a drastic leap in some developing countries. For example, in India, penetration increased from 12.8% in 2013 to 51% in 2017.^11,34 The usage in these regions is becoming ubiquitous with ownership per capita that bypasses other indicators of possession of assets including per capita income. It is now evident that there is massive penetration of mobile phones in the developing world. The size of economies is, therefore, not the only determinant of mobile phone penetration.

Mobile phones contribute to overcoming some of the barriers to technology adoption especially in the developing world, which includes technological complexity, inadequate awareness, high investment cost, age, lack of network infrastructure, and perceived low trust.^17,22,25,49 Consequently, mobile phones are among the rapidly penetrating digital technologies urgently needed to accelerate the speed of addressing societal challenges. Two buzz words have emerged out of debates on the ecosystem of mobile phones in the developing world: disruptive and transformative technology. The two words are worth exploring further in the developing countries as part of the studies on the ubiquitous mobile phones.

This chapter presents and discusses the results, where the disruptive and transformative powers of the mobile phone were studied in the Lake Victoria Basin (LVB) of Tanzania. Two key research questions are answered: (1) How mobile phones are supporting the engagement of small-scale irrigation farmers within Formalized Farmers Organizations (FFOs) in the LVB of Tanzania with other actors in water resources management? and (2) To what extent does the use of mobile phone services promotes the social, economic, and environmental goals of the FFO in the study area? Furthermore, the study applied the context lens of selected small-scale FFO at the bottom of the pyramid (BoP) of the Tanzanian water resource management structure. The chapter is narrative in nature with the substantial use of processed primary data collected from the field. The principle of on-demand overview and alertness as well as on-going debates about these powers are presented and used to shape the discussions.

1.1.2 THE PRINCIPLE OF ON-DEMAND OVERVIEW AND ALERTNESS

The principle of on-demand overview and alertness refers to situation-driven collection of information, where human is assisted with electronic devices. The principle embodies the concept of LifeLogging. Stefan Selke³⁹ explains by mimicking the army, where the LifeLog concept originated. He introduces a principle called “Total overview and alertness.” The soldier in the army becomes fully equipped in the helmet with different information collecting devices (for image, in-house and external sounds detection and capture); hence, the word “total.” In this fashion, soldier becomes a human sensor. While the sensors and associated devices in a soldier’s helmet are collecting data on a continuous basis, a mobile handset replaces them all, and for the convenience, it is used on-demand. With mobile phones, data are not collected all the time but on an occasional or on-demand basis. This is also applicable in the resource-constrained areas, where a mobile phone or any other data collecting device cannot be active all the time. In the rural areas of developing countries, there are still challenges related to network and electric power infrastructure, limited financial resources to cover costs of airtime as well as limited device capacity to store and transmit large amount data.^10,37

1.2 DEBATES ON TRANSFORMATIVE AND DISRUPTIVE POWER OF MOBILE TECHNOLOGY

Debates on how mobile technology—especially the phones—contribute to development (M4D) has largely stemmed from its disruptive and transformative powers.^{13,14,35,48,50} On one hand, debates about disruptive nature of mobile phones have focused on their ability to dismantle the hierarchical and bureaucratic information flow. That is the ability to create a common platform for sharing information. On the other hand, arguments on transformative nature of mobile phones have focused on their ability to bring about changes in social, economic, and environmental aspects.

Traditionally, many debates have composed proposing and opposing sides. Likewise, the ongoing debates about ICT for Development (ICT4D) including the Mobile for Development (M4D) have not avoided the effects of traditional nature of arguments. However, despite having proponents and opponents, this chapter refers the two sides as optimists and pessimists, respectively. In other words, the debates compose of those who see the light at the end of the tunnel (optimists) and those who need to be envisioned to achieve the same (pessimists). Optimists believe that developing countries need to embrace digital-driven transformation to better social, economic, and environmental conditions. For example, the World Economic Forum (WEF) advocates for digital transformation based on four reasons: (1) inefficiency and poor delivery of services, (2) corruption that stalk the economic development, (3) widening gap of digital skills capacity, and (4) a widening gap between traditional economy and the digital economy.⁴⁰

Other examples of optimistic view about the disruptive and transformative power of mobile phones come from the agricultural sector. One of the many aspects of these powers is high penetration rate and massive adoption in rural areas, which in the context of developing countries are homes to the majority of agricultural dwellers.³¹ Others are the ability to connect farmers to the markets, identify crop diseases, verifying the genuine agricultural inputs such as fertilizers, pesticides, and seeds as well as providing other extension services.^3,24,29,49

Despite this positive side of the debate, some authors have indicated divergence from conclusions made about the disruptive and transformative power of mobile phones. While some have consistently cautioned about possible falsified credits about mobile phone progression in developing countries, others have criticized the methodology that has been followed to arrive at the conclusions. They argue that contexts of studies have been too broad to the extent that actual local situations were overshadowed. In other words, the local contexts were not fully reflected in the studies. For example, the study in Kerala, India¹⁹ revealed that mobile phones were transforming the way fishermen were connected to the markets. With their phones, the fishermen were able to identify the potential customers, the volume of the commodity in demand, aggregate their merchandise, and eventually deliver to the dest...