“Le web pour reverdir” in Ségou, Mali

From 13 to 19 January 2014 the W4RA team met again in Mali and Burkina Faso. This is a continuation of the m-Agro
Knowledge Sharing Pilot of the VOICES project (EU-FP7 2011-2013). The field trip was co-organized by VUA, Sahel Eco, and Réseau MARP. Part of the scaling-up strategy of W4RA to support knowledge sharing in rural communities by developing and implementing innovative services is training of local partners in the use of the services. This training workshop in Segou was the first of a series of workshops, to train local users how to deploy voice-services in their own work. Sahel Eco staff was trained in use and deployment of services and co-creation of new services in support of agro-forestry (re-greening).

Amadou Tangara, chef d’antenne from sahel Eco presenting the RadioMarché system to his colleagues, how it works, and what it impact has been up to present, in increasing the sales of honey in 19 villages of the Tominian region, in Mali.

The objective of the workshop was to train Sahel Eco staff members in the use of the existing voice/based systems: RadioMarché, Tabale, Foroba Blon, which have previously been developed, to support Sahel Eco´s work in regreening; to
collect, together withthe Malian local partners, new use cases for services for “knowledge sharing for regreening” in support of rural development and food security in the Sahel, and start the development of new systems using the Living
Lab approach. During this trip a new mobile system was developed: Mr. Jiri – a tool for field collection, monitoring and evaluation of on-farm trees.

We also wanted to evaluate the existing services RadioMarché, Tabale and Foroba Blon together with the end-users, and collect feedback for further improvement and scale-up of these three services and discuss sustainability and business aspects of the voice-based systems, with radio stations, farmer organizations and Sahel Eco partners.

This activity was financed partially by Nuffic in the TMT-MLI-192 programme.