Monitor climate-smart agricultural interventions with a real-time participatory tool

Abstract

Climate-smart agricultural (CSA) interventions often require “fine-tuning” i.e. feedback from multiple stakeholders e.g. farmers, extension agents, NGO workers, and policy implementers on their relevance in a given context.

Getting essential feedback to ensure projects are on track in a timely way, especially for fast-moving CSA interventions with busy implementers, can often be a challenge.

Smart monitoring combines ICT tools with the “5Q” approach to ask five questions of various implementers at different stages of the project. Rapid assessment results from answers to the “5Q” questions combined with ICT-driven geospatial data provide quick insights, which can be key to fine-tuning the trajectory to success.

Such an approach not only provides a real-time monitoring tool, it is also cost effective: one 5Q survey round in a CSA project consulted nearly 1,000 farmers in just 45 minutes by automated phone calls at an operational cost of just US$300.