Okay um hello everybody! Everybody can hear me? I'm Maria Elisa Christie, Director of women and gender in
international development at CIRED, the center for international research, education, and development
at Virginia Tech. Welcome to our virtual women and gender in development discussion series
and we're so happy you could all join us. We had 57 people registered just a little bit ago and
people keep joining now so I hope we get a big group um diverse group. So please notice that
as the PowerPoint was saying this event will be recorded so by staying on you're
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you know turn off your camera um on your zoom. So before introducing our speakers I'd
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diversity and excellence we commit to advancing a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive community.
So the full calendar and any updates for this year's discussion series can be seen
on our website you can also ask to be on our listserv and uh you'll get updates on that so
um some housekeeping this discussion will last approximately 40 minutes
um the speaker's presentations actually it's going to be more as Jess was telling me more like a
fireside chat so it's not exactly a presentation it's going to be a discussion between Jess and
Daniel but anyway it's approximately 20 minutes followed by about 20 minutes of discussion open
to everyone and the Q/A session. All dialing participants will be muted to enable the speakers
to present without interruption. You're welcome to post questions anytime that you would like
to ask in the chat box um and if we have time and and we're tracking those and then I will
give a chance, I will ask either I will read those questions and then at the end I will open them
let people raise their hand to actually speak um to this to the presenters directly so
um yeah then I would ask you to unmute yourself and you can speak to them directly.
So in order for a discussion to be as rich as it may be as it can be we need everyone
to be respectful and treat all participants with kindness and consideration without discriminatory
behavior and again the webinar is being recorded and you will have access to it via our website
takes us sometimes even two weeks to get that to get that up there um and it'll be added to
the Virginia Tech library, So it'll be permanent access there and then also if you would answer
the survey at the end um that would be great very helpful to us. So oh my gosh let's see
sorry so now I have to introduce speakers where did that page go?
Okay we have two amazing speakers who I know well and I have to say I have to say this it
is bittersweet that you are not sitting in this building right now because I miss you so so much!
Okay got that off my chest now Daniel Sumner is an Associate Director of gender and youth
at ACDI/VOCA. Prior to joining ACDI/VOCA, he worked with us for five years as Assistant
Director of women and gender in international development um here at CIRED. um Daniel has 10
years of experience implementing capacity building research and evaluation interventions in the areas
of gender equality, gender responsive agricultural research, inclusive agricultural development,
positive youth development and inclusive education. His current research focuses on exploring how
gender and social norms shape the design and dissemination of agricultural innovations.
Dr Jessica Agnew is the Associate Director at the College of agriculture and life sciences
global programs of Virginia Tech uh Dr Agnew has also been with CIRED
had been with CIRED since 2018 as a graduate assistant and then as the assistant director of
research operations and program management until this month when she started her new position at
CALS global. Congratulations to both of you and wishing you the best in your continued careers
um she has nearly 20 years not 20 she's not that old, 10 years of experience working in
market-based approaches to nutrition and food security in an international context.
Her current research focuses on strengthening value chains for indigenous vegetables and
creating agriculture sector transformation using blockchain technology and complementary strategies
in Kenya. So the title of their discussion today is women's smartphones and leafy vegetables: how
ICTs support women producers in western Kenya to secure their position in commercializing value
chains for indigenous vegetables. So please welcome Daniel summer and Dr. Jessica Agnew!
Thank you so much thank you for that warm introduction and thank you all so much for
your interest in this fireside chat style format of presentation that we'll give today we're doing
it this way instead of a more you know formal presentation because we really wanted to give
honor to the voices that we've heard throughout this project and what women have shared with us
um throughout our experience. So Daniel and I have been working together since 20 well for a while
but on this project particular since 2020 and a larger research team that also includes
Dr Ralph Hall who I don't think was able to be here today as well as Egerton university that's
located in Njoro, Kenya, and ag unity which is an Australian tech startup that has developed a
smartphone application that runs on blockchain technology. So we entitled our talk how ICTs um
contribute to women uh securing their place and commercializing value chains because it's
not just blockchain that has contributed to their improve the improvements and their participation
in indigenous value chains but this the phones themselves access to internet access to WhatsApp
so we wanted to be a little bit more broad but before we get started in our chat I just wanted to
give you a little bit of background on the project so um I think uh Lumbini emailed you all a video
yesterday that documents more about our project but this project was really trying to understand
if blockchain technology could help contribute to improvements in food security by strengthening
these really amazing value chains for indigenous vegetables. So we're talking about indigenous
vegetables we focus specifically on leafy greens of amaranth, cow peas let us see if I can remember
all of them Ethiopian kale, spider plant, and jute mallow. So these are vegetables that are indigenous
to Kenya rather than sort of the more exotic vegetables like cabbage or lettuce and so they
have a really important cultural significance as well as nutritional. They have amazing medicinal
benefits and nutritional benefits as well but they're also a female owned crop meaning they're
largely produced and marketed by women whereas they're largely traded by men so traders are those
who buy from producers and sell to retailers so there's very interesting gender dynamics
happening in these value chains and we wanted to understand in addition to creating improvements
in food security could access to technology like smartphones and blockchain and this smartphone app
that ag unity had developed could um this help to secure the place of women in value chains that are
increasingly becoming commercialized. So they're becoming they're selling more volume of produce at
higher prices to different types of buyers not just uh households but due processors
and supermarkets so typically and we'll talk a little bit about this what might happen
in a commercializing value chain is that men's participation would become higher displacing women
from positions that they have traditionally held so we really wanted to to know more about this
through this project so before we without further ado I'm going to introduce Daniel
um and let him do some talking for a moment but I wanted to just show you a little bit about what
the blockchain is that we're talking about um I really want to emphasize we are not talking about
cryptocurrencies so in case you think we are opening up women to the risks of the financial
fluctuations of the crypto market, we are not doing that um so this picture uh summarizes
how the ag unity app works and what blockchain is. I think it's a bit of an elusive concept for some
so essentially what would happen if I wanted to sell my vegetables to Daniel, I would say
how much I wanted to sell maybe 50 kilograms of vegetables for say a thousand shillings
and so he would accept that price or reject it but let's just say he accepts it so he clicks on his
phone that he has accepted it that green check mark then it's sent back to me where I see that
he's accepted it and I confirm that this is the transaction the price and the quantity that we've
agreed on and I click the green check mark in my phone then on the back end behind where nobody
else can see so even though it's blockchain the people using it don't necessarily see all of the
behind the scenes coding and block-izing I guess you could say of the data so these transaction
details are then registered as a a block of information and this block is broadcasted
to a variety of people in a network so people can verify that this transaction is true and it
happened and this is the value of blockchain if in case you're wondering why everybody's so excited
about it many people have copies of these ledgers and copies of the transactions that are occurring
so then these uh this is then validated by those in the network and then it's added to previous
blocks of information which is where you get the chain from so I'm not a techie and um that's the
best explanation in a short amount of time I can give on the blockchain so I hope that helps
um to to clarify for you all but I just want to turn it over to Daniel and I was just wondering
if you could just talk to us a little bit about what you were thinking when we first started
this project so we started with a value chain analysis we really wanted to understand
the context what what the main points were in the value chain what were you thinking about um
in terms of how we should have designed that process from a gendered perspective?
Yeah no thank you jess and really that formative value chain analysis was an integral to the design
and development of this activity and the reason for that being is a product of a richer body of
research and work by practitioners really over the past decades as many on our call today this
may be aware but agricultural value chain development and approaches and interventions
have really proliferated in in recent decades as a means of trying to stimulate advance rural
transformation and poverty reduction but again it's still important to recognize that however if
using agricultural value chain development as a mechanism to try to stimulate broad-based economic
growth it's also continually challenging to do that in a way that can that benefit
those who have been at the most the margins of the value chain or have been excluded from
participation and benefits it's really this that that analysis is a part of that richer recognition
of understanding of what that means and that comes from again understanding that your position in the
value chain for the women that we were working with in western Kenya what might that look like
the potentials for upgrading the potential of blockchain to help upgrade or or support their
position in that chain and you can kind of think of upgrading does come with numerous benefits the
potential for farm income additional maybe other employment income opportunities or in this case
primarily better better prices but again it's important to recognize that those benefits from
upgrading from taking advantage of opportunities to upgrade your position the value chain are not
guaranteed and they depend on who you are and how you enter the value chains and really important to
think of through our value chain analysis needing that rich cultural and contextual understanding of
the chain because the chain is not a separate entity that exists apart and separate from
biophysical or sociological landscapes or conditions and definitely they are
not gender neutral again kind of what we were wanting this analysis to look through at how
gender and other social categorizations could shape an individual or individual's ability
to participate in the chain, how they're currently participating in the chain, where are they located
and how? But also looking at those opportunities for upgrading and those potential risks rewards
and benefits. So I always like to think of it again this analysis, our formative analysis was guided by
really just two broad questions: one is looking at how those gender social norms and power relations
shape participation and engagement in the value chain but also how efforts to support upgrading in
turn can have an effect on reshaping, renegotiating those gender and social norms and so really
there's again again a wide a really substantial body of existing research that is examined and
looked at these these challenges but there is that research that has documented and shown that
uh women producers and women entrepreneurs in the value chain can have less
limit, more limited access to resources information, weaker control over assets
and land and less ability to demand fair prices but again this analysis was kind of going into
these maybe assumptions that we know from the literature how do these present
or manifest in the context of Western Kenya within these African indigenous vegetables value chains
is really using them as a guidepost to examine and challenge our assumptions as well
and so I guess really launching into like more about the actual activity
itself just is kind of what do you think were some of the most interesting findings for you from
that formative value chain analysis in terms of looking at differences between men's and women's
experience or other gender different differences that exist in the production and marketing of AIVs.
Yeah so ag unity actually had a really interesting process that they usually use when starting in a
community that's really human-centered design and what was exciting about bringing on your expertise
Daniel is just really trying to like you said understand how the gendered norms affect what
they were looking at so what they would do is find out about hopes and fears and perceive
negative trends and positive trends and so we conducted these focus groups with men and women
differently and what was really interesting what emerged and I'll just share here um this with you
that there are similarities in perceived negative trends and then each both men and women have
different perceptions of what of negative trends even though they're both farming the same crop. So
lack of information and fluctuations in price was something that both men and women are
really frustrated by in in producing and selling AIVs whereas women are perceiving that they have
access so they're able to you know access seeds, they're able to produce vegetables, they're able to
sell in the market but they lack control and there's this limited decision-making
ability for them when they when they are engaging in the production and sale of AIVs
as well as not having having when they say lack of market it means like not any place to
sell the vegetables so they may be able to sell vegetables if there are people willing to buy
but they really struggle to find those buyers whereas this was not really a trend that was
that men focused on. Men were focused more on you know the financing piece needing to access
loans and collateral and then needing access to training and information
and then going back to women you see that they perceive that some failed to pay the
agreed upon price but that wasn't really as a perceived negative trend uh by men
uh looking at positive trends we want to really also focus on exemplifying the positive.
It's interesting you can see on the right hand side here that men perceive it as a
very positive trend that more men are getting involved in AIVs um so this actually really does
emphasize the importance of this work and trying to ensure that women can continue to participate
not that men can't um but as long as it's not displacing women as we as we go along um and so
that and then women you know they talk about that they're able to they're really focused
on the production and the marketing of these vegetables but both of course are concerned for
the demand the demand of AIVs and which is African indigenous vegetables to use the abbreviation
as well as the available the availability of inputs particularly fertilizers. So you
know there are these common perceptions which I think is always important to notice and then
where the perspectives are are differing and men you know they're more oriented um thinking
more towards smartphones and technology and the as well as you know the financial piece again
subsidies for fertilizers and they're also interested in sort of what happens after
the vegetables come off the field and value addition processes like post-harvest drying
so one thing we really focused on in different trainings was this idea of commonality that
everybody has their own hopes and their own fears in and they're all trying to provide for someone
and it was really amazing to see how that brought people together and viewed themselves more as a
team in engaging with the technology. Both men and women really want access to information
and training and they both want to earn more income so we had a really exciting training
around this um where people started to realize their commonalities more than their differences
but there actually is a perception among most people I'll come back to that one sorry this
is a kind of a big graph here but what you can see on this second line here is that about 34 of
female producers and 26 percent of male producers perceive that selling to men and women is the same
other than that there is a perception that there is difference that deaf men and women
express different concerns that men and women ask different questions about the products
some of the qualitative information we've received even though it's a fairly low percentage here
that um reported well especially amongst women that women are likely to complain or bargain but
more in the informal discussion settings that this sort of theme came out a lot more that women are
much tougher negotiators even other women were commenting on it so it is very interesting to
notice that there are these gendered differences in the way that vegetables are produced all the
way through to being marketed and then there also is a very clear difference between smartphone
ownership so again uh sort of a big graph here but let me try to digest it for you so when
you're looking at if uh someone has previously used a smartphone. 71 percent of female producers
had not whereas 52 percent of male producers had not so you see a little bit higher of an
interaction with smartphones previously. Only 11 of women participate who participated um in the
quantitative survey had used a phone previously compared to 24 of men and then if you go all the
way down here to consumers in the very uh right at the bottom corner, 44 of female consumers currently
own a smartphone compared to 70 of men so there's also differences here in the gendered um ownership
and engagement with technology and and this really kind of brings up an important point which is that
from the beginning of this project we wanted to be mindful as you were talking about what does
introducing technology what impact does it have on gendered roles um so could you could explain
a little bit about what might what might happen what's been observed in other contexts um and
and why did why do these types of um projects have impact on gender norms and relationships
I think from from from a first standpoint with projects it's understanding
really push and really comprehensive approach now of this intentionality to understand
how gender and social norms do have this impact this understanding I like to think that there
is like we this prevailing view that we we understand this now we are understand the gaps
we understand this this is important to document this at the design phase and I think especially
so now continuing with the the the promise of digital technologies which have really emerged as
important for advancing agricultural development outcomes that they are critical and they are
reshaping the agricultural landscape and so really through not just like enhancing
maybe the potential for transparency in these interactions for women
or AIV producers or retailers but the access to information is really critical and access to
information about beyond just production practices access to price and really thinking through
that fully but I think it's really important to think through that there's still this
dispense the technologies are promoted as being silver bullets at times and really being
intentional and understanding unintended ways how particularly ICTs can be constrained or controlled
for different individuals, different households whether it's availability of sim cards minutes uh
challenges looking at how who individual peoples within the household are talking to so that they
have a lot of potential but also a lot of it can be a source of unintended um outcomes as well for
household members so really thinking through that critically in the design of activities like this
and thinking through that intentionally and I think that's a core aspect
of thinking through that into the project and I think that's an aspect now too within the
commercialization looking at who loses control and whose outcome. so I think that's a core component
but moving into not just using beyond the design phase that is a one-off bit to continually to
integrate those questions on who has access, how our phones being used into a continual cycle
of learning which the ag unity team through our partners particularly
Jimmy who I will be joined later integrated that into their constant reflection and engagement with
um the AIV producer groups that were engaging on this activity.
Yeah so I mean to that end I think it you know what you said about the iterative learning
is really important as well as in the initial design phase so thinking about um how you know
from this out from the outside having the goal of securing women in in these commercializing
value chains you did a really great training for Egerton students that we were working with
who participated in a hackathon back in November so we kind of took them through this process on
human-centered design and how you can incorporate that thinking from the beginning and you did a
really great training um so on on how to incorporate gendered considerations
into technology design so could you just maybe explain a little on the theory or
what you wanted to really communicate to the students through that process
I think it really is a continual one is the process that can be challenging for all I think
agricultural researchers, practitioners throughout the world still is thinking
through at times we're so focused on a particular maybe management practices, a new
technology any piece of equipment is that ultimately yes we are designing these for end
users, for farmers, for producers and really as you said in that human-centered design process
centering their experience but also taking that one step further with students at times
and thinking through that that's not a uniform person in the middle that there's different
constraints on how gender, age, socioeconomics has all these different factors shape who and
how the individuals may or may not benefit from a technology and that really that importance of
knowing your potential end user knowing the context and I think for for me in that setting it
was really working with students an opportunity to for them to reflect back on their own experiences
and understanding how there is a design their own where they their upbringing
or their own current life to reflect upon that and make those connections and think through
those unintended, those unintentional biases that they had in their their thinking to expand their
thinking and really just getting into that theory and expanding it a little bit more on
who and how they may benefit and also that again reiterating that process is that
it's iterative, it's not just a one-off going to the design phase, it's piloting
coming back getting feedback it's it is a process, it is a continual process
and also looking at again through your technology how its communicated and just continued to probe
that thinking and spur of reflection for me was one of the biggest things with that
group of students but then also lastly I think helping them think through when we think of
looking at the gendered and social dimensions of agricultural development on a continuum
thinking through approaches that again from an initial starting point understanding where are
their differences that are being sensitive to more responsive understanding these differences,
how do we work about addressing them and supporting in the value chain to really being more
critical on how do we look at the root causes of inequality and maybe more go about transforming
those with dialogues and I think that for me as it continues exciting to see where students are
their thinking and that they're shifting their own discussions that they have on renegotiating
gender norms and roles and relations and their own experience with their peers and how that can
translate how when I saw the students as some of the ideas they were coming up with messages
that they could integrate into the phones on helping to you know probe our prime you know more
equitable decision making dynamics, it was really interesting and inspiring in a lot of ways to see
yeah they it was really neat to see some of their questions and through the training that
you had done you know and there was a laser pulse training so laser pulse funded this work they had
a training on gender. So students you know starting to wonder about what gender role transformation is
versus gender sensitive which is you know just working within existing gender roles so
yeah just seeing how they're coming up with these ideas and thinking of ways like what
like is there different ways you need to communicate information to men versus women
and how can we incorporate that in their app so it was really great to see their creativity
and how they were responding to what you developed.
Yeah so I think to um my notes here again
is um again okay I guess now that we've talked a little bit more how we work
to ensure gendered perspectives, our design implementation do you think a little bit more
about just how we working with the team we integrated we continually incorporated this
in with the team, the ag unity team in Kenya. Yeah so I'll start by just giving a bit of a nod
to something that was developed by the laser pulse team so this it was called the embed they've
developed this model called the embedded research translation model and so the idea is basically
that you're taking what you learn in the field and then incorporating it back into field tested
solutions then communicating this information to practitioners and policy makers and then thinking
about and then back into the private sector so we had the advantage of working with ag unity in the
work that we were doing so it was really easy to kind of bring back any findings we had in
into adapting in the app and then thinking about how this kind of scales
uh to the wider community and and other potential future projects
um but we did a variety of different things so one of the concerns from the beginning was that
if women were given a phone their male spouse would take the phone and use it
for their own you know agricultural production or their own um use so ag unity's onboarding process
actually helps to address this because each of the apps is specifically assigned to the user
um so it's not a general uh sort of login that in order to log in you have to have had your identity
verified and um to create a unique pin so um there were some challenges with that like forgetting
pins and things like that but what it meant was that um each person using the app was able to
use it for themselves, there wasn't this sharing which also helped us to generate you know unique
insights into how each person was using uh was using the phone and the ag unity app um we also
of course work to ensure equal representation of male and female producers traders and retailers so
certainly when we're talking about um gender role transformation we don't want it to seem
like men have no place in um in agriculture or in roles they've traditionally had so men are often
traders and we didn't want to you know disrupt these gendered based roles but wanted to just
focus on the fact that every person can engage equally and in the roles that they've already
had so we've uh we really tried to capture that in how we recruited to um to participate in the study
and we also really focused on joint training in cooperation and collaboration so rather
um you know conducting trainings for women and focusing on female empowerment and to men
on respecting women's participation based on what we were hearing
from the different focus groups um and how they interact with one another, we focused more on
the sort of team environment and a collaborative spirit recognizing that both men and women have
something to contribute and each have their own knowledge and like I mentioned at the beginning
each have their own goals and often those goals are common. We had this
really beautiful moment where um you know I asked so if you're here today because you're trying to
earn more money to take care of your family or a loved one please stand up and everybody stood
and everybody's face changed after that. It was just this realization of we're
we're not all trying to make money because we're greedy or I'm trying to steal from you we're all
trying to care of other people, for other people and so when when there was this realization I
don't know there was this moment of understanding of not displacing people from the value chain of
allowing everybody to participate and engage um in the way that they want to and how as innovators
that could be a really exciting thing and how working as a team would really accomplish that
um and then we also really wanted to focus on engaging women as ag champions so
ag unity is this Australian company and are still in a startup phase and so they don't have on the
ground you know field officers so we thought who can really be these champions in the field who
might have a deeper understanding of um of the technology or how to use it and so we actually
worked within each community to have them nominate an an ag champion and really tried to encourage
female leadership in these uh in these roles which we were able to accomplish which was amazing
and seeing being able to see that there's also opportunities to move on beyond just producing uh
indigenous vegetables that there's opportunities for advancement even within local communities
as you step into leadership roles and organizing community members so that women can actually grow
with the commercializing value chains in their role and we really tried to example and
modify exemplify this. So ag unity actually hired a field officer, a local field officer
who was a woman to demonstrate the value of female leadership in agriculture and tech
and we also had ag unity uh one of their developers came to the field who was a woman
as well and I think having those new types of reference models of things that you can aspire
and grow into um we understood from the women who are participating was a really um important
and valuable experience for understanding how they grow as the value chains grow as well. So I always
like to you know pause and reflect there's all in my opinion there's always an opportunity to
do better so I guess I'd just I'd throw this back to you Daniel and say yeah what could we
have done better. So ag unity has this out of the box application so we're already kind of working
from a platform that existed but do you think there's anything better that we could have done
um to really um consider the gendered perspectives or I'm thinking about how women really secure
their place in the value chain for indigenous vegetables as they continue to grow?
Yeah I think no learning from the experience with ag unity and some of
their previous work that they've done with um cooperatives with coffee production in Ethiopia,
I think one area not to foreground to later in the discussion is more about how engagement
with forming groups and supporting group in that decision-making process and what that looks like
and organizing groups in a way to um the decision making their engagement looking at
that a little bit more critically to support and facilitate some of those tensions I know
that arose during the activity, how to manage conflict within the groups, I think one
area to support that but also thinking through a little bit more clearly, a little bit more the
intentional coaching that is needed and to require to support all participants with
utilizing the app and the phone, the additional coaching support that is needed with
understanding unfamiliar technology at the beginning and then lastly I think being a maybe
a little more intentional at the beginning from the household approach that emerged
through the interaction of the activity and having some again some targeted engagement with men
at the beginning outside the project, what it would have supported and facilitated um the household
farming as a business approach that was ended up emerging and and guided our implementation
throughout the rest of the activity or things that immediately come to the forefront of my mind.
Yeah that all makes a lot of sense. Jess and Daniel I'm being the time keeper now it's 2:09
and we have five questions including one of them which is mine so
that's the least important one um but I wanted to give a chance to go ahead and ask these questions
and then see if there was you know people who wanted to participate in discussion. So do you
want to wrap up before we do that yeah can um can I ask a favor? I was we were going to have
um one of our women because I don't like to talk about people when they can speak for themselves
um so we're going to have one of our the women that we've worked with who runs a community-based
organization um just share her experience as a woman what it was like to participate.
She's just having trouble getting on zoom so I might just try to call her on WhatsApp, it's a
bit unconventional I know but to see if she can share on speakerphone um a little bit about her
experience. So if you would just allow me to give this one shot um she's amazing, her name is Jamima.
We're just ringing here ,hi Jamima, how are you?
all right we're gonna try to see how this works um so I have you here on zoom I guess
how many participants do we have uh 36 right now including everybody. 36 participants here so I know
you weren't um able to get on zoom but if you didn't mind we talked yesterday about if you would
be willing to just share from your personal experience how the ag unity app and participating
in this project helped to make sure that especially you as a woman but also the
community-based organization new vision that you run how it has really helped to make sure that
you can remain in the value chain for indigenous vegetables as more people you know especially men
maybe become interested to get involved with the production of these vegetables and their marketing.
Thank you Jessica and new vision is very glad to join the blockchain and in the
commencement of unity coming to us and bringing us upon it was something that was in is really
encouraging our team most of us had not known how to use or are able to afford
smartphones. So first of all they introduced us to technology and the use of smartphone
um in the process of using these smartphones we have found them very useful on the processes of
buying and selling letter tables because like unity was able to give us um
funds from to farmers producers to traders like ambition and then to retainers those who sell
completely to the consumers and in most of the time that we since received the accounts we
scan our process of buying and selling vegetables. There are icons on our phones and on the unity app
and they help us can the the process of buying and selling and payment of dedicatable and we are
glad to have that process because it has enabled us a lot in so many ways once it has eased power
it has make made the work of our family easier or at least easier. We can call ourselves on
phones and speak if someone has vegetables or vegetables I can ask and a farmer can respond
another thing that we would have benefited is if I paid or did not pay the farmer the phone could
maybe the trader or the retailer is not going to date the farmer
the farmer has the next bid on her phone to show if she was paid or was working a third one
in the process of buying and selling vegetables. Many farmers did not have enough time to make
record, you buy, sell and go wrong only one you have sold you don't know when they are meeting profit
but still the technology came up the records on the on the phone can if you
sit down after selling and you're relaxed and you want to remember what happened
the phone has the records of yourself the number of kilograms the type of vegetable
and if you have been given money or you've not been given an hour. So a farmer can tell
from that record whether he or she is making and the record can remain in future.
We are happy that even the energy and unity are holding our hand to enable us as some
small villagers from the military western king to be on the international railing of what is
really happening internationally, the processes of agricultural activity and we are so happy
because we appreciate and uh and love our local indigenous vegetables for two good reasons: one,
they are also available in every place but we have been wishing that even other people know
that what we consume is important and if we can they can hold our hand and eat our food
they can get the good thing
it's not a medicine that when you eat a it's like a prescription but in the process of eating them
you find that most of the diseases in one's body are
relinquished from the processes after eating vegetables
so we are so happy for Jessica and the movie for coming to us in western Kenya
to enable us and enable us into the international
which is very small but very important for feeding and for people's health. Thank you so
much Jamima we're just gonna turn it now I think over to some participants who have some questions.
So I'm just going to leave the phone on and you can hear um and keep participating or you can go
I know it's late for you there so thank you so much for sharing your experience with us.
Thank you Jess um we have six questions and Peter has his hand raised. So I'm gonna if you can try to
and we and we actually only have like 12 minutes within the you know the 2:30, not a lot of time so
um if we can go through them relatively quickly so Chris Mundlane asks and I'm
sorry if I say people's names wrong, I will try uh was there any focus on extreme users
if so what learnings came from them um can you say what you mean by extreme users Chris?
Yeah sorry this is a question um just online I was just clarifying
uh with what extreme user meant so see we got ta unmute you need to unmute yourself Chris
those consuming are they too many or extreme using in what time not sure we're trying to find
out here give me one second so sorry can you hear me yeah yes I'm thinking yes go ahead Chris okay
yeah no by extreme user I just meant people that do things slightly differently maybe they have
um some kind of unique advantage in the market uh or or even disadvantages but someone who
does things differently that you kind of took a lesson away from and said ah we can maybe use that
somewhere else I like that kind of like the the idea of what's it called positive deviant behavior
but in different fields and different things um no we didn't but I will
we're of course continuing this work and that's a really good idea and I'm going to look into that
thank you okay the second question is from Jacktone Ogejo. Have you experienced any unintended
consequences of this technology and if so what are those we did actually okay i'm gonna um turn
um jamima on to this one jamima um can you just quickly briefly briefly jamima say um
something about uh the conflict that you've had to mediate as a result of this project between women
the conflict i can say is positive
the men are feeling jealousy to me that is very positive because some of us like women
and some of the men were not willing to have their women response
so the conflict between the men and the women over the phones yes it is there but to me it
is positive because they are now looking at us like people who are standardized
they used to underrate our work they have now known that our work is not as low as they imagine
and it has let people give us respect in our community and it has made the local vegetable
be looked at as an essential commodity not as they just look at it like a local food
so yes there is a conflict men are feeling jealousy and they are like others don't want
to give their women their phones to use their hands to own them because them they don't have
smartphones their women have smartphones and they want to feel like they're the bosses in the home
so you find some of them are snatching the response but to me that is very positive because
now it is making a woman have a voice and is being respected at least yeah that definitely
was one one outcome from conflict but then there was also some other dynamics right between women
where you were teaching about understanding and doing some conflict mediation right where
um some women who kind of were positioned as leaders in the project um you know would
ask for other women to surrender their phones if they didn't feel like they were using them
well and some interpersonal dynamics that kind of were escalated because of the project right
the project is being hold with a very high esteem and some women need as Jessica you
are right they are using that as an opportunity to make to make themselves look like they are too big
they can just snag this on from this person whom they think is they hate not not even because the
person has done something wrong but because they just feel that they have somebody else
like a family member friend or a another person she wants to make her name to another person
so she wants to snack this phone and they smack them it's like around three or four
yes that's true they have already mapped those they want to give
until we intervened and said no they also have to go to the owners until it is restored and
just uh just to report on that I followed up and the story was not at the course
it was not as it was just left home to go and see the brother in Nairobi to give her school fees
for her son and they had talked with the son and the father because she had been put on the wall
for collection I know people are not giving she had mental and up and we are all and people are
not contributing so she just left and the family knew she was growing so the story was just behind
yeah that's good and you did Jamima did a lot of that so just to summarize I hope you
guys can hear Jamima okay but essentially there was um yeah this idea where it became like the
phones were like community assets rather than belonging to the individual and so
the groups would um if they didn't feel somebody was participating enough would ask for the
phone to be returned to like the community group which is not how we set it up at all
so that was a very interesting dynamic and unintended uh con consequence both positive and
negative a lot of really good things came out of the community organization including registering
as farmer groups and these groups actually pursued their own training um from other organizations to
help them improve the quality of their vegetables so yeah anyway that's that's one of them okay um
jess i'm gonna like reorder here we had another question from chris but we're gonna come back to
that if we have time we have a very broad question about climate change I'm gonna skip that for now
my question I'm gonna skip. Larry has a complicated question and he's in house
I'm gonna wait. Peter Smith has had his hand up for a long time so I'm gonna ask Peter to unmute
himself and then go to Jen Williamson's question. So Peter's my grandpa oh
you have to unmute you have to unmute
yes I'm sorry I'm just sitting enjoying and I don't know how my your hand's gonna raise
my accident all right well nice to see you yes anyway thank you so much for inviting me
okay thanks for being here um let me read Jen Williamson at ACDI/VOCA's
question so how are payments disbursed through the system? Do women need formal bank accounts linked
through the system? Is there any information about whether this has strengthened increased
women's control over income generated through the um african indigenous vegetables and have
any risk been identified as commercialization and profits increase like male takeover conflict etc.?
yeah so right now as it stands the the ag unity app doesn't actually transact in any currency so
what will happen is two users so a producer and a trader will scan one another's phones uh when a
price has been agreed upon and a quantity so what happens is in each person's phone there is the
same record of that transaction and then the cash is actually transacted outside of that um there is
talk and interest on integrating uh the app with m-pesa and there's kind of been like mixed opinion
from participants on that some are like yes integrated with m-pesa that would be amazing
other people like no way don't do that we're happy to just like do the m-pesa transaction separately
or transact on cash. One thing we actually learned um was in terms of risk and COVID
actually um m-pesa is in case you don't know uh this system of financial transaction that's
ubiquitous um in Kenya and uh uh money is sent via SMS if I understand if I remember correctly
yeah through a text message and so the money is transacted this way and what you can actually
take a loan from m-pesa but what happens is if you have a loan with standing and somebody pays you
then it automatically goes back to repaying the loan and so as you can imagine during COVID this
was not ideal and so people actually really asked us no we just don't want anything we're just fine
to transact separately so it is important to keep and that really highlighted for me the risk of
introducing something you know from maybe like a western perspective would be great everything's
integrated it's all in one app it's efficient it's you can make the financial payments all
right there but understanding how payments and and finance work in a different context and how it can
open up people to risk um and I think there was another question
so you don't need a bank account so that's the one advantage of this you don't need a
bank account and so you can introduce the sort of formalization of transactions without yet bringing
in the bank account and um in terms of risk yeah like as we've talked about a little bit um and
Jemima highlighted you know there's the men um not wanting their wives to have uh the phone and
some conflict happening there and Daniel can you want to say a little bit about that we talked you
explained to me the concept of like power within power over could you want to say something
quickly about that? Yeah I think I know I know we set up from the research perspective to to the
baseline and I know you're still working the team just on finalizing the final report with the end
line analysis but we did structure in a way trying to look at um decision-making dynamics adapting um
questions from the images um the gender equality men scale looking at norms and attitudes around
decision making we restructured those and the women's empowerment and agriculture index their
decision making modules um I'm not quite sure we're still so I just need to look at like what
the impact there on the data. I know there were some of the qualitative findings came out there
there were feeling like some some changes in that power within for women making that
the decision-making that control and some of their dynamics. I think this is just another area
continuing this model can continue to be enhanced with a more intentional farming as
a decision-making approach targeting structure on that decision-making dynamics. I think one
is one area so they're still looking at that information and I think that's one area that's
coming over a little bit into the risks that we identified with um designing some
of those follow-on trainings with some of our um excellent colleagues from from Eggerton looking at
decision-making dynamics and starting to what does it look like to facilitate conversations around
that in the household. Okay I need to break in because it is 2:29, so I would like to just give
a formal close and then ask if Jess and Daniel if you can stay on 15 more minutes if we were
doing this in person this is where in the library we'd have people come up and chat with you and
have their bagel and coffee and so um so we do have a couple more questions um but I do want to
officially close so that people can leave um and and I do want to say so Lumbini put in the link
to the survey it's very important for us to get your feedback please we'll also email it to you if
you're registered but please do do the survey it won't take you very long and I also want to
announce that our next speaker which will be our special women's month speaker is uh
Dr. Farhana Sultana from Syracuse University. She's very well known, she's a geographer um
she'll be talking about climate justice gender and challenges in a fractured world and uh we will
send you if you on the survey you can tell us if you want to be on our listserv and then you would
get the information about that. um and you could also just check our website for more information
and I hope you can join us for the next one so again anybody can just hang up if you would like
to leave now it's now 2:30. um but I appreciate it if Jess and Daniel if you could say for a few
more minutes can you yes I see Daniel saying yes yeah okay then I'm gonna I'm gonna read um
Bernard had asked and you addressed some of these already but I'm gonna read the question would you
please highlight challenges facing implementation of this project? So many, yeah number one Covid
that was terrible um and I and you know I think so. I saw another question there
on how Eggerton was involved um so I can do a two for here so Eggerton was amazing you
know they really led the implementation on this um my co-pi Joseph Mwangi um he did an incredible
job and I mean he already had a lot of experience working in indigenous vegetables so we really were
like co-co-pis really in every sense of the word co-designing the research with vt and ag unity
um I think the other challenge was um just how wild the uh the indigenous value chain
um is compared to what ag unity was used to working in so there was some challenges
there to figure out how it would all work um for example uh we introduced a grading system
through this project so grading vegetables into grade a and grade b
and that was challenging to figure out how exactly that works how do you keep it separate during
you know in transportation how do you convince traders that it's worth it to keep it separate
um how do you convince retailers to change the way they're selling the vegetables
um and and what how do you define grade a versus grade b how do you enforce it because
the blockchain will secure information but if you put bad information in it just secures incorrect
information so yeah what about you Daniel? any for you whatever some of the challenges no I think
I think one again like echoing what you said jess I think the nature of the value chain was
was different than I think anticipated coming in from from ag unity but again the adaptability and
I think that that adaptability of the the team to adapt was really a result of the art partnership
and the relationship that you established with joseph and the relationship what it looked like
with edgerton university and the nature of that relationship i think really positioning both you
and him and both institutions as equal partners in this research process was was essential to
driving that adaptation and and which i think maybe we think research process doesn't always
is obtusive to adaptation because if something changes then you can't maybe make that final
comparison at the end um I think another challenge which I really like how you put sometimes with
really phrased it behavior change and i think rethinking technology adoption in general it's not
a simple fact I'm going to use it I'm not going to use it is it changing a behavior a habit and so
many habits so many behaviors that maybe needed to change or be tweaked as a result of using
the blockchain application was really interesting and how the continuing to see it in that process
from the behavior standpoint I think will be continuing to be interesting
um I think was another another challenge it's not just something you you do and you just keep doing
it. It's just like in all of I think in our own lives you do something for a little while you
forget you come back and it's the good intentions just seeing that we're all humans and those human
issues of of trust and things in interplay within how the promotion of technology is like like this
I will just um just build on that really quickly and do a plug for public-private partnerships and
how with ag unity and um edgerton and virginia tech we landed on something really cool that
was this iterative research and having partners that specialize in deep dives into information
and trying to understand the underlying forces and then a business that could actually like
be immediately translating that into something and we're really excited but there's all this talk
right now about public engaging with the private sector I'm not really sure anybody really knows
what it means um so I think we kind of figured out a little bit what it means especially for
a university to engage with the private sector. So I think we're going to do a cool publication
on that so keep your eyes out it's it'll come at some point well actually I'd like to ask um
the second question Chris had which kind of addresses this a little bit but specifically how
did the hackathon complement ag unity and vice versa? Yeah so the hackathon was really cool so
from all of the work that we did we realized essentially if I can wrap up our finding in a
nutshell in one sentence it would be that it's not just blockchain but blockchain plus that can help
improve security and strengthen value chains. So I will also simultaneously address Sandy's question
on climate change so what we realized is that farmers need the record-keeping functionality of
that's offered through the ag unity app but they also need access to other things like weather
information and how those weather patterns are changing so they can prepare from season to season
they need access to extension services I think a couple extension folks are still on the call
that I was just speaking to before this about how we can create extension modules that could
be deployed on the ag unity app that then could be communicated to the consumer that the farmer
took a training on climate smart agriculture and so may inspire more confidence in their product
and actually generate a return to the producer so the hackathon was about kind of presenting these
different ideas these different opportunities that we saw to the students and then in these
interdisciplinary teams of agricultural students and computer science students they were actually
able to code applets that are deployed on the ag unity platform. So ag unity's platform is a super
app so it kind of think of like the play store so then you can have smaller apps inside this
bigger app so they were able to develop these applets so um and because of that we actually
are working with I think some or ag unity is working with some of these groups of students
to further develop those apps that they made so for example one I actually think you know
with the work we've done in IPM is called doodoo free and it's all about integrated
pest management practices and how to communicate that to farmers and then farmers basically voting
on the practices that that work best for them and so there's this sort of social component
another one was an online marketing platform so um that where you could show the different
stages of your vegetables and the different practices that you're using along the valley
throughout the production and then ultimately to find a seller so the students really like helped
develop new services for ag unity and ag unity help them figure out how to code uh uh on their
platform so we had it was really exciting and the ICT authority in Kenya is actually really
interested in developing this out into an actual like hackathon curriculum where this could be done
um I've actually I've had Chris in mind who actually does hackathons um fairly regularly
and roping him into this so uh it was a really exciting event. Jess I am going to read it but
I put Larry's message in there because it's very long and then we have another one from
Jen Williamson so let me let me read Larry's, so there were two treatments he says the blockchain
contracts and access to smartphones. You can't have a blockchain app without the smartphone
so the independent effect of the smartphone cannot be separated in this case of relatively trusted
value chain participants and relatively small quantities of money being exchanged might you
have had similar success by uh marking or making contract agreements with simple text messaging?
Yes this is a really good question and something we did think about a lot. We we realized in all
of this the essential role of whatsapp um and that's that was huge for a lot of participants
because they were able to take pictures and send their produce um to potential buyers and because
they did this buyers were actually then willing to come to the to the producer to pick up the
vegetables whereas sometimes it was the producer taking the vegetables to this to the buyer because
they already knew what they were getting how much they were getting what it already looked like. So
um we thought do we even need blockchain or do you just need WhatsApp um but Jamima actually
shared with me she's like no no no you need the ag unity app because you don't remember you don't
remember if like if you agreed to something on whatsapp and if that's actually what happened
um you don't remember if you like if you agreed on the phone and after you already texted it so
the very nature of how the the app worked and how it was introduced and how people understand
how it was part of the whole process really created that trust in the records that they had
and um and that's why um they they really want the ag unity app we did ask them do you want just
like a high quality phone or do you want a high quality phone plus ag into the app and hands down
every single one of them said it's got to be with the ag unity app so there's still nothing more to
unpack there about um like what if there's anything else that's really contributing to
that trust or that they that they perceive will add value to their operations but um yeah so I
think we have I think they're interested in more than just texts but we definitely did think of
that. Okay I think this would be the last question and then uh I would like Jess and Daniel both to
wrap up so how ex this is from Jen Williamson, how accessible is the app to low literacy populations?
Is it visually accessible or text based? um let me see if I can just like super quick bring up
something and see if my computer will cooperate so ag unity actually developed this with low literacy
in mind it's very visually based it can also be translated into different languages so this was
translated into Swahili um and but it's still so you have both a visual and uh like text so let
me if you give me one second okay here we go so I'll just share my screen oops that's not that one
so you can see here um so the give harvest is when I am I'm the producer and I'm now giving it to the
trader so you can see there's the visual here and I can maybe zoom in even further um so yeah you
can see the and then the get cash is a hand with the coins and the shop and goods so this was all
designed with the idea of low literacy in mind and then each of these text descriptions of the
applet so each of these is essentially an applet that exists within Ag unity's super app is uh
yeah is so it's an applet and then each of these are translated into the local language
and then up here you can see the wallet and that's where you go to find out
um uh the value of your transactions and if you have any payments outstanding that's something we
didn't really talk about but it's a really cool feature of this that it allows people
to collect on their debts or their credits um because you know how much you have outstanding.
So great thank you so much all for coming and for hanging in here and um yeah if you I think
uh maybe through Maria Elisa if you have any interest in working with us going forward we're
trying to really develop a research agenda and future ideas for research and work in Kenya and
beyond um please feel free to reach out and thank you to Daniel! We've had a great time as always
working together and just appreciate everything you've done for this project and Maria Elisa for
having us. So thank you all very much thank you everybody thank you Daniel. Daniel last word from
you? No I think again just just the from for me being a part of the research team this
activity has really highlighted this conversation what it means more to to kind of think through the
partnerships and how universities partner with each other and I think it's a really great model
moving forward as we continue this conversation thinking through how different partners are
engaged not just universities how engaging with communities working with Jemima's organization what
we look and what we how we define partnership and I've just I've just always really appreciated your
your leadership in that area Jess and kind of continuing to spur that reflection and thinking
amongst the broader research team with with education and ag unity.
Thank you so much! Great well thank you so much both of you and um we will stay
in touch and I hope some of the participants we still have eight oh 16 now left will join
us for a future discussion series. So thank you everybody! Thank you! Take care! Thanks everyone.