Lutheran World Relief is making the most of smartphone technology in West Africa. Smartphones are, first, a training platform for Producer Enterprise Agents (PEAs), the community-based agriculture experts who regularly disseminate their knowledge to the producer groups they oversee. And the data that PEAs collect during their day-to-day work is made available to project staff and stakeholders through use of cloud technology. Such data is not only useful in monitoring and evaluating impact, but PEAs themselves find it useful in more accurately predicting the volume of the coming harvest and negotiating contracts with buyers based on those volumes. Lutheran World Relief partners with TaroWorks to make this technology available to farmers and producer groups throughout the region.
