Video on mobile phones as an effective way to promote sustainable practices by facilitating innovation uptake in Mali

Summary

• Mobile-phone videos could be accessed by people with limited or no contact with information sources, such as younger women, and video based information was found to be understandable for illiterate farmers.
• The use of video on mobile phones is a novel approach to farmer-to-farmer exchange and has great potential for enhancing dissemination programs or specific research and development projects to enable more resilient, inclusive and democratic agricultural information systems.
• Of the farmers who had watched one of the videos (N = 148), 60.1 % had adopted at least one of the videos’ innovations.
• Farmers who received the videos on their mobile phones shared them via Bluetooth with an average of 6 other farmers, quickly expanding their outreach.