ITIKI Plus: A Mobile Based Application for Integrating Indigenous Knowledge and Scientific Agro-Climate Decision Support for Africa’s Small-Scale Farmers

Information and communication technologies (ICTs), especially mobile phone technology, have great potential in improving livelihoods and alleviating poverty among Africa’s small-scale farmers. In particular, an effective decision support system that can aid farmers’ tactical and routine level decisions has been proven to lead to increased agricultural production. In this paper, we present such a tool – ITIKI Plus intelligently integrates indigenous and scientific data and information to provide contextualised micro-level drought forecast and cropping decision information to small-scale farmers in Kenya, Mozambique and South Africa. By providing the farmers, especially women, with both tactical-level and day-to-day decision support, the farmers have been able to make decisions that are up to 98% accurate. They have also been able to increase their food production by up to 10%.