Using animated videos to complement traditional agricultural extension services

Timely access to relevant information is one of the key elements behind farmers’ success. In rural settings, extension and advisory services have proven to be pivotal in delivering agricultural information and promoting adoption of improved technologies. However, many studies have shown that the traditional approach of providing agricultural information through extension services has become overstretched and under-resourced.

The increasing penetration of mobile phones even in remote areas, at a time when most governments are grappling with a low extension-to-farmer ratio, can improve information dissemination to farmers in different locations within a short period. In the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), face-to-face training by extension officers to farmers is severely challenged by lack of personnel and other resources, despite being the most common approach.

The effectiveness of animated videos in delivering agricultural information has been tested in different settings with more positive results than expected. A study led by Mocumbe (2016), for instance, proved that animated videos combined with extension training as well as animated videos alone yield way better results in learning gains among smallholder farmers, when comparing with extension training alone.

Aligned to this, a paper published in 2019 in the journal of Information Technology for Development led by Dr Julia Bello-Bravo, a Professor from the Department of Agricultural Sciences Education and Communication at Purdue University, demonstrated that two years after being shown an educational animated video on post-harvest bean storage method, farmers in Mozambique had a 97% retention rate and 89% adoption of storage solution [click here to watch the video].

The “low hanging fruit” of animated videos in delivering agricultural topics is that they require minimum or no physical presence of extension personnel and can be shared through mobile phones on social media. An extension agent can share animated videos on topics of interest with some or all the targeted farmers through WhatsApp or any other online platform remotely.

Scientific Animations Without Borders (SAWBO) have taken a bold step of transforming research content for extension into animated videos. SAWBO is a global initiative, led by Professors currently based at Purdue University in the United States of America, that produces two to three minutes 2D and 3D animations of peer reviewed scientific content for extension to benefit a wider audience. The main purpose of SAWBO is to generate and share animations as part of a global effort to scale Research and Development (R&D) content to reach billions in a world of 7200 plus languages. SAWBO animations are developed to cover as many local languages and dialects as possible through a global network of experts and institutions.

The Centre for Coordination of Agricultural Research and Development for Southern Africa (CCARDESA) is partnering with SAWBO to fast-track the dissemination of agricultural knowledge products, including resilience enhancing innovations, technologies and management practices (TIMS) that have been generated over the years through various programmes across the Southern African region. These will be shared in local languages spoken in the different Southern African countries in order to improve communication between researchers and end users.