The Smallholders Farmers Rural Radio

The Smallholders Farmers Rural Radio tackles rural poverty and hunger by designing and broadcasting daily programs in the local Igbo language. The radio enables farmers to acquire contemporary agricultural and environmental management techniques, to receive daily market information, to advertise their farm products and to learn business skills. Smallholders utilize daily broadcast information to decide what, when, how and for whom to produce in the long term boosting their agricultural yields and household income. The radio is interactive and invites feedback from listeners through the deployment of interactive radio (AIR) mobile devices. This is a simple communications system intended to link those off the cellular and electrical grid with the rural radio. AIR are small, rugged, solar-powered mobile devices that record user voice input, and then asynchronously forward voice feedback to the radio station via an ad-hoc delay-tolerant network. Due to the low power footprint, ease of use, and use of wireless connectivity between devices, AIR does not incur any cost to the user. The project increases knowledge sharing and the rate of development through community involvement.