Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Dramatically increased accessibility and decreased cost- per-person impacts are needed for scaling IPM in Africa Julia Bello-Bravo1,*, John Medendorp2, Anne N Lutomia1,2, ] ]] ]]]]]]] N Peter Reeves3, Victor G Sal y Rosas Celi4, Manuele Tamò5,# and Barry Pittendrigh2 While traditional scaling for integrated pest management (IPM) Introduction in Africa requires the movement of expert trainers from village to While agricultural productivity in Africa must be able to village, these efforts are often costly, time-inefficient, hampered feed its current and future populations [1], most African by distance, and became impossible under COVID-19's governments and international development partners movement restrictions (despite tremendously increased public agree that this will require sustainable intensification of need for IPM-scaling knowledge). One solution to this dilemma agriculture [2–4••]. However, biotic risks (including in- is IPM-scaling, usable by a diversity of development actors sect pests and diseases) are some of the most serious expending limited or few resources, to deliver critical threats to agricultural intensification (e.g. rice-cropping information to large numbers of people with systems-approach systems during the Green Revolution in Asia [5]). In information and communication technologies. This paper Africa, agricultural insect pests are already causing 60% describes one such systems-approach scaling platform, yield losses and encouraging the use of harmful syn- Scientific Animations Without Borders, which effectively elicited thetic pesticides [6•]. end-user solution-adoption and decreased unit costs over increasing scales in three African countries during COVID-19. While integrated pest management (IPM) can poten- How to scale game-changing IPM insights ‘off the shelf’ and tially curb pesticide misuse, it also suffers from sig- ‘into people’s hands in the field’ is also discussed. nificant logistical limitations [7••,8•]. Realizing IPM’s promise for low-resource farmers requires information Addresses campaigns to support behavior change, locally sourcing 1 Department of Agricultural Sciences Education and Communication, materials/items, using plant extracts, and selective use of Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA 2 second-generation pesticides (or a combination thereof) The Urban Center, Department of Entomology, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA [8•–10••]. Such approaches increase crop yields and 3 Sumaq Life LLC, East Lansing, MI, USA incomes while reducing farmer costs and impacts on 4 Sección de Matemáticas, Departamento de Ciencias, Pontificia their health and environment [10••,11]. Universidad Católica del Perú, Peru 5 Biorisk Management Facility, IITA-Benin, Cotonou, Benin However, many African farmers are often primarily Corresponding author: Julia Bello-Bravo (mbellobr@purdue.edu) fluent in local languages only (or are low-literate learners * https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1710-4725. in national languages) [8•,12] and in remote areas in- # https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5863-7421. frequently visited where traditional/government-exten- sion agents. The higher costs and lower accessibility of Current Opinion in Insect Science 2022, 54:100971 these issues limit the reach of new IPM-knowledge so- This review comes from a themed issue on Special section on IPM lutions to lower-resource farmers in Africa [13]. Conse- in Africa quently, shortfalls of farmer knowledge about synthetic Edited by Thomas Dubois and Manuele Tamò pesticide dangers still require better information cam- paigns to mitigate or eliminate those dangers [6•,8•,9,14,15]. Available online 17th September 2022 Game-changing ideas https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cois.2022.100971 The above motivates this paper’s proposal to dramati- 2214-5745/© 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an cally increase farmer accessibility to IPM agricultural- open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http:// intensification information while decreasing the costs of creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). delivery. However, scalability is defined or measured [16–18], it always must address the increasing costs for extending an intervention’s reach [19–21]. Fortunately, the history of science provides an exemplar of this pa- per’s proposal. www.sciencedirect.com Current Opinion in Insect Science 54( 2022) 100971 2 Special section on IPM in Africa In 1953, Watson and Crick released their game-changing resources [44,45]. Aid earmarked for food security and idea of DNA as the basis for heredity. With decades of other Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) goals was other innovations to follow (e.g. Sanger’s sequencing of redirected to emergency pandemic relief [45,46], while genetic materials, Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) farmers who leveraged agricultural-intensification im- technologies), the largest impacts from this game-chan- provements found that they could not take their in- ging idea were most felt (among scientists and the creased yields to markets (due to curfews and movement general public) with the advent of genomics [22]. restrictions) [47,48]. In this context, improved IPM Two main drivers of the genomics revolution included postharvest-storage innovations became a critical input (1) exponential decreases in the costs of sequencing for supporting food security during the still-ongoing genetic materials (and the supporting technologies) and pandemic [49]. (2) exponential increases in sequencing speed [22] (including ‘big data’ advancements using artificial In general, these impacts prompt a rethink around how intelligence [23]). development work will achieve food security going for- ward [50,51]. Curfewed mobility among global devel- More generally, a productive potential becomes better opment stakeholders during peak-COVID-19 exposed realized when dramatically lower-cost, more accessible cracks in traditional work methods for large develop- technologies and infrastructures to support productivity ment organizations [42•,46,50,52,53]. Climate change as emerge — for example, steam engines and the telegraph well makes traditional travel (for face-to-face work) for the Industrial Revolution [24], or now-ubiquitous, problematic and contributed to vastly increased use of comparatively low-cost mobile phones and Internet in remote technologies (such as WhatsApp and Zoom), the Information Age [25•,26]. Over the past half-cen- undermining the conventional rationale for in-person tury, many stakeholders — including national agri- interactions and introducing new technological problems cultural research programs, Consultative Group for and stressors [54]. Taken in total, these many changes International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) centers, invite reconsideration of “digital” international devel- universities, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), opment work and work products generally. and individual change agents — have joined forces with international development agencies to research, de- velop, and distribute game-changing ideas for trans- Systems approaches are needed for scaling forming the lives of socioeconomically marginalized integrated pest management information people, particularly in Africa [27–29]. While these efforts Game-changing moments rarely occur only through in- were not always successful and sometimes had adverse creased donor spending — especially now, given the social outcomes [30–33•], from a technical standpoint, massive diversion of funds to mitigate COVID-19 [55] too many of these game-changing IPM innovations — and more typically by reconfiguring the social realities (which easily could have been applied at little to no cost) that afford them (for the present paper, a radically in- ‘languished on the shelf’ without reaching those bene- creased information accessibility at reduced per-unit ficiaries. Of the innovations disseminated, only a handful costs). Over the last decade — which crosses the have been scaled to their maximum reach [34]. 2015–2017 tipping point when cellphones became the primary digital-access device type [25•], glob- Additional challenges: COVID-19, climate change ally — efforts have focused on developing global sys- Accordingly, dramatically increased informational access tems approaches for informal education that leverage at dramatically decreased cost-per-person delivery is digital accessibility for IPM messaging. One such sys- needed. While information and communication tech- tems approach is Scientific Animations Without Borders nologies (ICTs) represent a potential pathway for such (SAWBO) (described below), whose educational videos delivery, game-changing support emerged recently, have demonstrated mass-scaled accessibility and solu- when cellphones became the primary digital-access de- tion adopt at reduced-cost scalability. vice globally (and in Africa specifically by mid-2017) [25•]. Against too much enthusiasm for this pro- At a time when digital solutions still face rural infra- mise — and with due caveats for culturally different uses structure obstacles (even in the third wealthiest country of cellphones, especially between men and women in Africa, South Africa) [56,57], mobile phones have a [35–39••]— COVID-19 has radically set back progress capacity to overcome those limitations [58] even without and exposed many knowledge and work gaps even for electricity (if solar recharging stations are available). As international development stakeholders [40,41]. part of the effort to leverage this capacity, SAWBO embeds scientifically grounded research for develop- Food security especially has been hard-hit. During ment innovations produced by others in an educational COVID-19, some humanitarian efforts ground to a halt animation format then useable by anyone for scalable (even after the lifting of movement restrictions) [42•,43], training (including on IPM topics). Importantly, others have dramatically shifted prioritization of limited SAWBO does not independently produce and deploy Current Opinion in Insect Science 54( 2022) 100971 www.sciencedirect.com IPM-Scaling in Africa using ICTs Bello-Bravo et al. 3 Figure 1 animated video content but produces it (on demand, when funded) toward whatever use or implementation the video commissioner desires. From SAWBO’s inception in 2011 through 2019, these educational animations (covering more 140 topic areas translated into more than 280 languages and dialects) have reached at least 50 million people through nu- merous ICT channels. Besides any use of these anima- tions by those who commissioned them, all videos are freely available on a systems platform for anyone to download and utilize for educational purposes. These same animations have also been used as research tools for determining the potential for cost-effective IPM-scaling using ICTs across a multiplicity of lan- guages, literacy levels, and cultures. Recent research (much of it focused on IPM specifically) has empirically demonstrated the multicultural acceptability of these linguistically adapted educational animations [59,60], greater learning gains and knowledge transfer compared with traditional extension teaching [61,62], high solution uptake, adoption [63,64], and behavior change in com- munities [65–67], as well as local add-on innovations [68]. Demonstrable advantages arising from this com- prehensive (systems) framework approach have included high learning gain scores [61,69], an 89% solution- adoption rate (measured at a two-year follow-up) for an improved postharvest bean-storage IPM strategy [63], and promotion of local adaptations of innovations [38,65]. To the authors’ knowledge, direct investigations of the research construct of IPM-scaling using ICTs in Africa are virtually nonexistent outside of SAWBO (based on our literature review of this research con- struct). This paucity of research echoes the literature review by Sartas et al. [70] that found no comprehensive framework for R4D scaling practices [82]. Nevertheless, genuinely new innovations rarely appear ex nihilo but involve a novel (re)configuration of existing materials and techniques. As antecedents to integrated pest control (IPC)-scaling using ICTs in Africa, for ex- ample, animated educational video has engaged [71–73] and locally translated [58,73–75] ICT-deliverable edu- cational content [38,76–78] archived through App-avail- able or online digital repositories [12,79,80]. Placing this research under a comprehensive framework makes the next (game-changing) step forward visible for further research and works to dramatically increase access while decreasing the unit costs per person impacted. A need to explore strategies for mass-scaling of YouTube GoogleAd campaigns for jerrican videos across (a) Ghana, (b) integrated pest management videos Nigeria, and (c) Kenya. The average costs to have one person watch 25% (exposure to the problem and solution) and 75% (majority of Mocumbe [81] documents a multiyear USAID-funded content of the video minus end credits) of the video. Note that only the study in Gurúè District, Mozambique, that identified a five most and five least cost-effective campaigns are shown for each critical gap (and developed an 8-step animated educa- country, in order to show the range of costs across languages. tional IPM video) for improved postharvest food security www.sciencedirect.com Current Opinion in Insect Science 54( 2022) 100971 4 Special section on IPM in Africa storage using locally available jerricans [82]. Developed that are practical and economically viable, delivery of initially with expert input from stored-product en- such IPM information in a scalably cost-effective tomologists and local community focal groups, pre- and manner, at the right time and place, and in the language postintervention learning gain studies then documented of local target populations, better assures solution- high knowledge-retention and solution-adoption at two- adoption and the movement of game-changing IPM year follow-up [63,65]. ideas ‘off the shelf’ and ‘into people’s hands’. Looming climate impacts, potential future pandemics, and as-yet The increased stress placed on global food security by unforeseeable globally disruptive events no longer afford COVID-19 [83] mandates these types of improved letting life-saving ideas not reach those who would postharvest storage [84]. Accordingly, USAID com- benefit from them — especially when the game-chan- mitted to a one-year investment in SAWBO RAPID ging capacities of digital education on cellphones are (described below), which focused on decreasing the widely available. delivery costs for animated video education while dra- matically increasing the scalability of that knowledge in Conflict of interest statement four countries (Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, and Bangladesh). N. Peter Reeves is the owner of Sumaq Life LLC. As one component of this USAID program, SAWBO Otherwise, the authors declare no conflicts of interest in RAPID translated an animation into an additional 100 the production of this work. languages (spoken in the four countries), which USAID then disseminated using YouTube GoogleAds in Ghana, Data Availability Nigeria, and Kenya, WhatsApp networks in Kenya, and national TV stations in Nigeria and Kenya, reaching No data were used for the research described in the ar- more than 10 million people. Because the visuals for the ticle. animation used already existed, the scalability costs for these 100 language variants only required generating a Acknowledgements new translation and re-overdubbing it onto the video. This work was supported by United States Agency for International Development (USAID) under the Scientific Animations without Borders For brevity, we report in this article only on scalability (SAWBO) Responsive, Adaptive, Participatory Information Dissemination (RAPID) Scaling Program (SAWBO RAPID), Cooperative Agreement No. costs for the video in Ghana, Nigeria, and Kenya. While 7200AA20LA00002, an Associate Award under 7200AA18LE00003 Feed pushing videos across countries as part of YouTube ad- the Future Innovation Lab for Legume Systems Research. vertisements is a rapid way to scale such content, Figure 1 (below) summarizes the reach-costs for those cam- References and recommended reading paigns (across the numerous language used). This pro- Papers of particular interest, published within the period of review, have vides proof-of-concept for increased scaling at been highlighted as: decreasing costs, however, AI optimization for delivery •• of special interest should further decrease these costs. For example, •• of outstanding interest viewership can be increased by preselecting the most appropriate regional-language variant and adjusting 1. Akiwumi, P. : COVID-19: a threat to food security in Africa. 2020 13 May 2022]; Available from: 〈https://oecd-development-matters. campaign spending to capture system fluctuations (e.g. org/2020/08/11/covid-19-a-threat-to-food-security-in-africa/〉. changes in content interests over time). 2. Pretty JN: The sustainable intensification of agriculture. Natural Resources Forum. Wiley Online Library; 1997. Besides YouTube pushes, a Kenyan NGO, Kataru 3. 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Heliyon 2021, 7:e06595. problem of ‘illiteracy’; it is equally an industry problem that fails to place This study marks the historically significant moment, per each global warnings in languages that people can understand. This article correctly region between 2015 and 2017, when mobile phones surpassed all emphasizes that ineffective communications (whether due to poor la- other digital information access devices. Globally (and particularly in beling or a lack of educational access to languages that the warning Africa, which was the first region to pass this tipping point), this means labels are printed in) must be overcome by more effective commu- that to reach the widest demographics possible worldwide, mobile tel- nications generally. ephones are the most likely and technologically familiar form of digital access for a majority of ICT-enabled populations. 9. Jepson P, et al.: Measuring pesticide ecological and health risks in West African agriculture to establish an enabling 26. 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Moskowitz K: International development in Africa: of pest severity positively associated with PPT adoption, as did level of historiographical themes and new perspectives. Hist Compass education, with a recommendation by the authors for increased literacy 2022, 20:e12712. development. This reprises, but with granular specifics, the through-line of a need for information campaigns for international development 29. Decker C, McMahon E: The Idea of Development in Africa: A projects generally, but specifically for any effort to dramatically scale-up History. Cambridge University Press; 2020. distribution while driving down costs. 30. Madela LM: Perspectives on South-North Institutional 11. Clausen AS, et al.: Effect of integrated pest management Collaboration/partnership Research in Higher Education. training on Ugandan small-scale farmers. Environ Health Insights University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; 2020. 2017, 11:1178630217703391. 31. 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