05 August 2024, Brazil: CABI Academy, a learning platform that addresses a range of agricultural challenges faced by smallholder farmers, has launched Digital Skills Training Materials. The pack can be used to develop skills of others within the rural community such as agro extension workers and plant doctors.
The pack is freely available worldwide. It contains resources such as a facilitator guide, presentations and delegate materials, is designed to develop digital skills – lacking within the agricultural sector – within the UNESCO global framework on digital literacy skills.
According to the study ‘Towards an Inclusive Digital Literacy: An Experimental Intervention Study in a Rural Area of Brazil,’ published in the journal Education and Information Technologies, digital exclusion has become “one of the multiple forms of social segregation present in developed and underdeveloped countries.”
Lack of practical digital literacy strategy
The study goes on to say that “there is still a lack of practical digital literacy strategy for rural and/or remote scenarios. As a result, the digitally excluded population may fail to take advantage of online services.”
Of all the regions in the world, for example, Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) displays the largest gap between the availability of digital infrastructure and people’s actual usage.
On average across countries in SSA, 84% of a given country’s population had at least some level of 3G mobile internet availability and 63% had some level of 4G mobile internet services, but only 22% were using mobile internet services.
Mobile broadband now covers almost everyone in the world, yet 3.4 billion people are still not using mobile internet, 93% of whom live in Low to Middle Income Countries (LMIC).
Across LMICs, the biggest barrier to mobile internet use, among those who are aware of it, is a lack of literacy and digital skills. This tends to be an even greater barrier for certain population groups, including women, and especially those who have less access to education and have lower incomes.
Women and youth to take advantage of digital technologies
Maryam Hasan, CABI’s Digital Learning Assistant, said, “It is hoped that by providing training materials for improving digital skills, opportunities will be created for more women to take advantage of digital technologies, and for more youth to provide structured training for their communities – perhaps in a commercial capacity.
“The use of digital technologies can contribute towards addressing climate change by improving the flow of information to improve agricultural practices, and by reducing the need to travel.”
The Digital Skills Training Materials consists of three modules focusing on information and data literacy, communication and collaboration, and safety.
Topics include setting up security on a device, connecting to the Internet, identifying safe and unsafe websites, using an Artificial Intelligence engine, creating a social media account and finding trusted sources of information.
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