Abstract
International development programing is increasingly integrating agriculture and nutrition goals, while attempting to demonstrate ‘impacts at scale’ and value for money. These multiple goals create complexities, both from a conceptual viewpoint and a more operational perspective. This article uses systems theory to examine the mobile Nutrition program (mNutrition), which aims to improve nutrition, food security and livelihoods for rural women and children, through mobile phone-based information services. The paper specifically uses mNutrition’s work in Malawi as a case study. The systems approach reveals that, as a complex system with numerous sub-components and tensions among different goals, the mNutrition program tended to minimize connections between its sub-systems (such as content development and mobile service development processes) in order to speed up movement towards the global planned outcomes. We argue that this is likely to have multiple impacts on outcomes, including on overall effectiveness and the relevance and sustainability of the mobile message content.
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Notes
Bangladesh, Ghana, Malawi, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan, Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Uganda, and Zambia.
A theory of change is a conceptual model explaining how an intervention will have a particular impact on the targeted ‘beneficiaries’. Theories of change, or equivalent logframe-based models, are generally required in international development project proposals.
These include work to produce products for sale, paid labour and paid services, unpaid care work, unpaid work producing items for home consumption, unpaid community work, and non-work. Some activities are conducted simultaneously with other activities (multi-tasking).
The mHealth theory of change was more complex.
User experience feedback mainly refers to IVR and Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) services, where Airtel can monitor the time spent by a given user navigating the menu until they find the information required, dropout rates at different levels of the navigation menu and frequency of access to specific types of information.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the smallholder farmers and other respondents in Malawi who agreed to be interviewed for this study. Dr. Huggins’ work on this article was made possible by a Banting-Vanier scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (#201409BAF-344333-257800), administered through the School of International Policy and Governance, Wilfrid Laurier University. Thanks to Prof. James Orbinski for his supervision during the post-doctoral scholarship.
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Until October 2016, Alvaro Valverde worked as Private Sector Adviser (ICTs) for Oxfam GB. His work involved leading Oxfam’s participation in the mNutrition program among other things. Oxfam GB was one of the five global content partners of the mNutrition program. Oxfam’s role involved global coordination of content development and direct support to content development in Malawi, Bangladesh and Rwanda.
Chris Huggins declares that he has no conflict of interest.
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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
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Huggins, C., Valverde, A. Information technology approaches to agriculture and nutrition in the developing world: a systems theory analysis of the mNutrition program in Malawi. Food Sec. 10, 151–168 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12571-017-0750-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12571-017-0750-7