Radio is Cellphone Alternative in Rural Tanzania

Innovations ranging from refrigeration to real-time communication can bring significant benefits to populations worldwide (review 6,000 years of innovation here), but in many areas, the necessary infrastructure isn't in place to let people take advantage of the latest inventions. For example, I described the problems of refrigerating milk in rural villages in India that lacked reliable electricity service in an earlier post. And although mobile phones are seemingly ubiquitous, if fact many regions lack access to reliable cellular service, therefore requiring other means to keep the populace informed.

Consider Tanzania, for example. Kantar puts the number of mobile phones in operation in the country at 80% of the population, but the GSMA notes that only 62% subscribe to a mobile service.

Writing in the New York Times, Sarika Bansal summarizes the consequences of communications barriers: “Even in today’s hyper-connected world, most farmers in Tanzania—who make up 75% of the country’s population of 48 million—have limited interaction with people outside their communities. Ideas, by extension, are slow to travel.”

Without access to information on the latest farming techniques, she writes, they use outdated farming methods passed on from their ancestors, and they lack up-do-date price information, thus becoming vulnerable to being cheated at the market. Too often, Bansal writes, “…small-scale farmers experience low crop yields and remain trapped in a vicious cycle of hunger and poverty.”

Bansal quotes Christopher Chiza, Tanzania’s minister of agriculture, as saying, “Network coverage is not so good for mobiles in remote areas.”

No doubt, lack of cellphone penetration is a problem that will ultimately be solved. GSMA forecasts that the total number of base station sites in Tanzania will grow at a CAGR of 19.1% for Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda through 2015.

However, there is an immediate solution available—the simple radio. Bansal writes that nearly 90% of rural Tanzanians have access to radio and can use it to get timely crop information and to learn about new farming techniques.

Bansal quotes Mercy Karanja, who advises the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on agricultural development in East Africa, as saying, “The radio provides information that rural folks feel they can trust. Farmers talk about the ideas to their fellow farmers. They can become agricultural innovators, and even champions.”

Bansal cites the efforts of Farm Radio International, a Canadian nonprofit organization that works with radio stations in Tanzania to develop relevant agricultural programming. Nevertheless, there are some problems that even cellphones won't solve and that require face-to-face interaction. To that end, Bansal describes the efforts of the nonprofit One Acre Fund, which runs fact-to-face training sessions with farmers in East Africa.

She quotes Andrew Youn, One Acre Fund’s founder, as saying that agricultural radio serves as a “supplement to person-to-person contact.” Nevertheless, Bansal concludes, radio has much broader reach.