IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2016 - 22

and supported through transmission channels. In Africa, community
meetings, evening drinking joints,
and water collection points, especially for women, are very good sources
of knowledge and information.
The advantage of using ICT tools
in agricultural extension therefore
becomes more important as they
support conventional agricultural
knowledge pathways that share the
same characteristics as traditional
oral cultures of knowledge transmission in African social systems.
For example, a farmer will adopt
an innovation when he sees how
successful a fellow farmer has been
in adapting the innovation. In such
traditional culture systems, interpersonal communication is considered more trustworthy.

What Therefore are
the Social Implications?
For any innovation to have a developmental impact, social mobilization of communities has to take
place through the traditional community channels of transmission of
information. In traditional African
societies, there are the community
gate keepers, who normally consist
of the elders, elected leaders, and
opinion and religious leaders. For
any innovation to take root, it has to
pass through these traditional social
channels. Indeed several keynote

speakers during ISTAS 2015 [6]
highlighted the relationship be tween technology, development,
and the role of innovation in this
process. Of note was that unless
technological developments were
transferred to users, and unless the
importance of social mobilizations
of communities was emphasized,
the technologies that were being
developed would have minimal
impact. The President of Ireland,
speaking at the opening event further emphasized that innovation
and development should be delivered within the context of social
justice. Scientific research and technological development was increasingly playing an important role in
our societies. Within that context,
Ireland was increasing support for
research and extension especially
for poor farmers and specifically
women farmers. And this was in
line with the Sustainable Development goals [7].
Therefore much as the primary
goal of acquiring a radio, phone,
or television set at the household
level is normally for communication, entertainment, and keeping
abreast of current events, the roles
of these tools have a much wider
social and economic implications
in moving forward innovations
and agricultural development. ICT
tools are increasingly being con-

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

ceptualized as social rather than
economic tools, their application in
the development process involves
both people led processes as well
as networks.

Author Information
The author works in the ICT4Development and Agriculture extension
field, and is a Ph.D. candidate in
Agricultural and Rural Innovations at
Makerere University-Uganda. Email:
janet.achora@act-africa.org/jalonyo
@gmail.com.

References
[1] B.M. Maumbe and C.Z. Patrikakis, Eds.,
E-Agriculture and Rural Development:
Global Innovations and Future Prospects.
Hershey, PA: IGI Global, 2013.
[2] A. Crandall, A. Otieno, L. Mutuku, and
J. Colaço, "Mobile phone usage at the
Kenyan Base of the Pyramid," Final rep.,
IHub Research, Nairobi, Kenya, 2012.
[3] CTA. "ICTs for Agriculture: Making it
Happen,". Kigali, Rwanda, 2014.
[4] R. Duncombe, "Mobile phones for agricultural and rural development: A literature review and future research directions,"
Development Informatics, working paper series,
pap. 50, 2012.
[5] L. Elder and A. T. Rashid, "Mobile phones
and development: An analysis of IDRC
supported projects," EJISDC, vol. 36, no. 2,
pp. 1-16, 2009.
[6] IEEE 2015 International Symposium
on Technology and Society (ISTAS `15),
Dublin, Ireland, Nov. 11-12, 2015.
[7] United Nations, Transforming our
World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. New York, NY: United
Nations, 2015.

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