The distortions created by the traders and the absence of performance of the agriculture cooperatives in most of the MENA countries have resulted in both the increasing isolation of small holder farmers as well as the absence of sustainability of most of the projects funded over the past three decades by the various governments and donor agencies.
In parallel, the majority of the ICT based projects addressing small farmers in various developing countries have not, according to the study published in 2013 by the World Bank on “ICT in agriculture “ reached yet a real financial sustainability . The outcome of our program as Knowledge Economy Foundation in Egypt, indicates that ICT is a sine qua non and sustainable component to secure the inclusion of small holders farmers in their ecosystem , provided it supports business oriented networks enabling forward and backward linkages .
Our program presently operating in 3 governorates, combines the creation and management of a mobile/web marketplace including the range of needed marketing and technical information, together with the mapping and management of contract farming schemes with both market buyers and input suppliers and the set up of a network of “village entrepreneurs” imbedded in small farmers groups. The key findings to date portray the existing bottlenecks in the empowerment of small farmers as well as identify possible effective schemes:
• The effectiveness of ICT solutions for small farmers is tied to the set up of alternative supply chain schemes enabling the distribution of their produce or purchase of their inputs as efficiently as the present system monopolized by the traders .
• A genuine interest from both market buyers and suppliers to deal > directly with small holders farmers , which stems the possibility of establishing a win-win cooperation the necessity to entrust the management of not only the ICT platform , but as well the forward and backward linkages network to an independent third party , supporting the small farmers groups and their associations .
• The need to extend the ICT based knowledge network beyond the extension services to the knowledge and tools enabling small farmers to handle the financial aspects and logistical aspects of their activities.
Moreover, it would be advisable to establish a platform of exchanges between the CSOs in the MENA region involved in rural communities and small farmers support, as most of our problems are common and having the same language, the ICT based solutions can reach an interesting economy of scale. In addition to the importance of building on other countries ICT experiences in this area , such as a central standardized input supplies ordering developed by the French cooperatives, home delivery based on linking communities of small farmers to household communities , applying e-learning , simplified value chain financing cycle as in India and several sub-Saharan countries .
Most experts as highlighted by IFAD in their meetings, stress the importance to acknowledge the key role of small holders farmers to sustain the food security of the world, and that is as well true of the MENA region. Thus the use of ICT is key in this sector to accompany and facilitate the introduction of the needed technology in the MENA agriculture, to encourage youth to remain in rural areas as ICT is their common language and to support the empowerment of small holder farmers in becoming progressively independent and sustainable economic entities.
