CCARDESA launches a climate smart agriculture mobile app for extension officers
Dec 05, 2019
While in the field, agricultural extension officers often need information about climate smart practices and technologies at their fingertips. This information helps them to work effectively with farmers when discussing climate adaptation strategies appropriate for specific farms to help them increase agricultural productivity.
With support from Hatfield Consultants Africa, and MindQ, the Centre for Coordination of Agricultural Research and Development for Southern Africa (CCARDESA) launched a new mobile learning application to help agricultural extension officers with their work. The mobile app has the following features:
- Learn – providing access to 67 CCARDESA knowledge resources on climate change adaptation in agriculture;
- Quiz – an interactive quiz to learn more about climate change and agriculture topics;
- Discuss – a forum to allow users to discuss pertinent agricultural issues in the SADC Region;
- Directory – of registered users who can interact with each other using the Discussion forum.
The CCARDESA Mobile Learning app is designed to work offline. Only the discussion forum and user directory need internet access to download updates. People directories and discussions that were missed while offline automatically update once the phone is back online. The initial app download is small (about 10 Mb) and does not require much data as it utilises web-services to deliver content to the app (approximately 200 kb). This is a significant achievement as heavy download requirements or limited functionality would negatively impact usability and uptake by stakeholders.
The app was designed in a distributed content framework, which means that the app is dynamic. CCARDESA invites app users to contribute to the further development of content on the app. Registered users are encouraged to help develop new quizzes, participate in discussions, and generally contribute to growing a dynamic network of practitioners, farmers, and researchers.
The app can be accessed from the Google Play Store by searching for ‘CCARDESA Mobile Learning’ and will soon be available on the Apple App Store.
This app was developed by Hatfield and MindQ in collaboration with the SADC Climate Change Adaptation to Climate Change in Rural Areas (ACCRA) programme, which is being implemented by the German Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and CCARDESA, funded by the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).
For more information, please contact:
Simon Hughes
Managing Director
HATFIELD CONSULTANTS AFRICA
Email: hca@hatfieldgroup.com
