The promise of digitalisation : Case study: Social Impact of a digital app for cocoa pod counting in Cameroon

Summary

This report presents a case study of developing a high-tech application, namely a digital cocoa pod counting application (a smartphone app), that has been trialled in a low-tech, rural environment in Cameroon. The cocoa pod counting app was tested with seven cocoa farmers in the Ntui area, in central Cameroon. This area is considered a low-tech environment, given the rural and remote setting. The prototype aimed to better understand tree and farm yields and productivity. This monitoring technology can potentially be interesting for farmers, farmer cooperatives, traders, government, sustainability certification organisations, and agricultural extension organisations. Therefore, the trial was followed by a workshop and interviews with different potential stakeholders of the technology (users, developers, beneficiaries, regulators) aiming to understand potential socioeconomic impact of introducing such a mobile app.
To understand the potential social-economic impacts of the technology, and the challenges and opportunities of creating and using farmer-generated data for different stakeholders, the SIFT tool has been applied. The Social Impact Feedback (SIFT) tool examines five dimensions of social impact and builds upon the responsible research and innovation (RRI) and ethical, legal and social aspects (ELSA) frameworks, which align policy priorities in the European community with academic notions of responsible innovation. The tool addresses inclusion and interactivity, responsiveness, solutionism and negotiation, participation and interdisciplinarity.
The accuracy of automated cocoa pod recognition and counting was not yet sufficient to predict cocoa yields. However, improvements to the technology and how it could be used appear feasible. A workshop and interviews with farmers and other stakeholders also uncovered and helped understand that a diversity of social impacts could result from the use of a cocoa pod counting app by farmers. These range from positive implications of better estimations of cocoa yield and measuring farm area, to help farmer bargain selling prices, to the costs and challenges of collecting and sharing such data. Recommendations for developing and implementing high-tech solutions in low-tech farm environments and their social context are provided.
Key messages:
• Most stakeholders did not consider the social-economic and ethical impacts of the use of high-tech cocoa pod yield prediction in low-tech settings. In the rural Cameroonian cocoa farming context, where diverse power and knowledge differences exist, the impacts of using such a mobile app could lead to very different, positive but also negative impacts for different stakeholders.
• Whilst many stakeholders could see the advantages of such an app and different opportunities to develop it further to be more functional and useful, there were very different perceptions of risks, and disadvantages. This suggests that it’s needed to involve different stakeholders in technology development and that diversity within stakeholders is important.
• Stakeholders suggested that the cocoa pod counting app could be adapted to include more multipurpose functions than orginially intended by the research team. For example, to support compliance with the recently adopted EU Deforestation Regulation and to aid detecting and treating pests and diseases.
• The Social Impact Feedback (SIFT) tool was useful to aid multistakeholder reflections on how a high-tech application could be used in a low-tech environment. This SIFT tool could be improved to further guide responsible research and innovation, ethical, legal and social considerations of technology innovation.