Justdiggit and KaiOS have partnered to bring land restoration education and mobile connectivity to smallholder farmers in Africa. Justdiggit restores nature by regreening dry lands at scale, positively impacting climate, nature and people (SDGs 1,2,5,6,8,13,15,17) Justdiggit has reached 1M people regreened 60,000 Ha African (farm)lands, restored >5M trees, capturing >1,8M tCO2e, and saving 11 billion liters of water.

Via a new Regreen App running on KaiOS 3G/4G smart featurephones, Justdiggit inspires and educates farmers to regreen their lands. Also, farmers get full access to all KaiOS features such as internet browsing and apps like Youtube.

The pilot involves 300 farmers in rural Tanzania who received training for KaiOs and the Regreen app. First results: after five months, over 80% use their phones daily for the Regreen app, YouTube, Facebook, and WhatsApp. First results show we helped 93% learning to “regreen” and 48% actually started practising. After first trainings >52% said they’re willing to buy KaiOs Smart featurephones at 22 tot 28 dollar, well within commercial range.

With 350M(!) African farmers, the potential reaching them via mobile in enormous, our goal is to further develop this sustainable mobile model to reach

Note for project website: more content is coming, this is just a short training clip of the KaiOs Regreen App V1.0)
Note for Geographical coverage: for the pilot it is Dodoma, Tanzania, with expansion Tanzania nationwide and Africawide

https://vimeo.com/523430075/573c466623

• Dodoma, United Republic of Tanzania

• Women
• The poor
• Remote and rural communities

Justdiggit has a proven regreening track record and these methods are very scalable, they roughly be replicated to 80% of the degraded landscapes in Africa.
Supported by Justdiggit’s global partnerships with UNEP (the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration), AFR100 and WEF/1T.org, the increasing mobile 3G/4G penetration throughout Africa, KaiOs’ affordable smartfeaturephones and our positive pilot in Tanzania, there is now a unique opportunity to further develop and scalable to reach and educate smallholder farmers. KaiOS is already present in Tanzania and works with many major mobile operators throughout Africa.
Before 2030 the majority of the 350M farmers in Africa will have access to 3G/4G smart(feature)phones. Next year in Tanzania Justdiggit wants to kick-off a national event and campaign, inspiring famers to use the upgraded Regreen App with farming, social -and financial benefits. With inkind mediasupport of ao JCDecaux Havas Group they will launch nationwide to target approximately 2M people (of the 20M rural population) that own (or want to purchase) a smart(feature)phone and can run the Regreen App. With the positive early results of our pilot, we're gathering interest from additional partners to replicate and scale this bringing both landscape restoration and mobile connectivity to millions of farmers across Africa.

The Justdiggit and KaiOS partnership and the Regreen App is sustainable because we use this first project learnings and results to create a (business) model that can scale up to ultimately reach and empower 350M (smallholder) farmers in sub-Saharan Africa making use of growing mobile developments. Justdiggit programs have proven that farmers themselves benefit from regreening their own (farm)lands by increased soil fertility, crop yields and carbon sequestration, making regreening techniques sustainable. Next to this connecting Tanzania’s, and later on Africa’s smallholder farmers, to the internet via affordable smart(feature)phones with an extended Regreen App/platform is also aligned with the business interests of the African Telco’s especially since reaching the rural target audience is more difficult. No free smartfeaturephones are supplied when we scale. Instead, first results already show that many farmers appreciate internet phones and apps like the Regreen App, and are willing to pay commercially viable prices for it. Our project also contributes to a sustainable, inclusive information society by making information — on topics related to regreening, e-agriculture, and other life-enhancing services — accessible to these rural communities who previously could not access such vital content. Through their mobile farmers can impact climate, nature and people (SDGs 1,2,5,6,8,13,15,17)

We use mobile technology to empower rural African farmers, giving them the information they need to improve their livelihoods, help avert climate change through regreening, and generally increase their quality of life with access to advanced digital services. We think this project is especially relevant because it addresses critical ICT challenges like bringing access to rural areas, affordability of internet access, and mobile skills training. We're creating a model that can be replicated at scale and help accelerate e-agriculture innovation.