Impact of Low-Cost, On-Demand, Information Access in a Remote Ghanaian Village
| Clifford Schmidt Literacy Bridge This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it | Andrew Azaabanye Bayor Literacy Bridge This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it |
| Trina Jean Gorman Literacy Bridge, Evans School of Public Affairs This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it | Michael Shayne Gary Australian School of Business This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it |
In developing countries, nearly 1.5 billion people live without electricity and 752 million are illiterate—two constraints that make accessing information challenging. To exacerbate this problem, the majority of these people live in rural areas, which are often hard to reach because of inadequate roads. In response, we examine the effects of a low-cost audio computer (“Talking Book”) for improving learning opportunities and knowledge sharing in such environments. The Talking Book is a battery-powered, durable, handheld device that enables users to create and listen to recordings and copy recordings between devices. In northern Ghana, we distributed Talking Books to a rural, remote village. The devices were pre-loaded with health and farming guidance created by local experts.
Residents showed great interest in the devices. Learning to use the device was generally easier for those with more education. Collaborating with local authorities to build buy-in was critical to success as was having a strong leader to monitor program implementation. Equitable allocation was a challenge because the devices became quite valuable—an issue that is likely to reoccur when devices are shared amongst a community. Future programs should make adjustments to broaden awareness of the program and to ensure women, the elderly, and other marginalized groups have more access.
We found that 91% of farmers who checked out Talking Books 1) learned the health and agriculture information provided by familiar local sources, 2) trusted the information, and 3) applied what they learned. Although there are limitations in our quantitative research, Talking Book users also reported significantly improved productivity relative to non-users. In some cases, agriculture guidance was not completely new to a farmer; but behavior change appeared to result when the farmer learned why particular techniques were more effective than others and how to apply these techniques most efficiently. Even then, 71% of people applying the guidance chose to test it on only a portion of their land; this reduced their risk and allowed them to compare the recommended practice with their traditional practice. Fig. 1 and Fig. 2 show the side-by-side difference of one farmer who applied the Talking Book guidance to a portion of his land.
Collectively, our evaluation shows that on-demand access to information can considerably impact the lives of rural, illiterate communities. Furthermore, the Talking Book appears to be a cost-effective tool to enable learning and behavior change. Read comprehensive paper at http://literacybridge.org/files/impact2009.pdf
Keywords: Knowledge transfer, information dissemination audio, illiteracy, low-cost technology, agriculture production
Profile
Andrew Bayor is Literacy Bridge’s Country Director in Ghana. He works with local partners to design, monitor, and evaluate programs that use the Talking Book. He has a B.S. in Computer Science from the University for Development Studies and over five years of research experience in rural communities.
