Tag Archives: farmers

Lowering the barriers to effective communication is the key to sustainable development

By Niti Bhan | Published: August 21, 2016

One of the challenges that we discovered during our multistakeholder workshop in The Hague a few years ago was that people tended to fall back on their expertise when faced with the discomfort of empathizing with farmer’s needs. Particularly so when the farmers in question were from Africa, and not from their own regions. Our […]

Posted in Africa, Assumption filter, Base of the Pyramid, Ecosystem, Indigenous & Traditional, Innovation Planning, Mobile platform, Perspective, Prepaid Economy & Informal Sector, Research, rural, Rural Economy, Strategy, Sub Saharan Africa, Technology, User research, Value | Also tagged assumptions, cross cultural communication, empathy, knowledge transfer, rural africa, sustainable agricultural value chain development, vcd | Leave a comment

An Introduction to Human Centered Design for Policy Makers in International Development

By Niti Bhan | Published: May 11, 2015

I’m making available the article based on our work with the Dutch government a couple of years ago. Download PDF

Posted in About, Africa, Assumption filter, China, Design, Frameworks, Innovation Planning, Literature review, Perspective, Projects and Reports, Research, Rural Economy, Sub Saharan Africa, Systems, UCSD, User research | Also tagged agriculture, design methods, PPP, public private partnerships, sustainable agricultural value chain development, value chains | Leave a comment

Food security: time to think of the small scale farmers

By Niti Bhan | Published: October 26, 2013

This article was written by David Indeje (@DavidBurudi) and was first put on the internet on West FM. It has been republished here with his kind permission. Agriculture is the essence of life, but it seems leaders are not getting the idea as farmers continue to experience the effects of climate change and in their […]

Posted in Africa, Base of the Pyramid, Cashless transactions, Economy, Flexibility, Income, Informal & Flexible, Kenya, Research, rural, User research | Also tagged agriculture, financial services, kenya, rural economy, value chains, vcd | 3 Responses

Exploratory User Research in the Rural Economy

By Niti Bhan | Published: October 25, 2013

When I first began developing the attributes by which to select representative user profiles for the original fieldwork to begin understanding the “prepaid economy”, that is, household financial management in rural India, The Philippines and Malawi, it was based on people’s ability to plan and budget. One can plan best when one is certain of […]

Posted in Base of the Pyramid, Business Models, Design, Economy, Expenses, Flexibility, Frameworks, global, Income, India, Informal & Flexible, Kenya, Philipines, Research, rural, User research | Also tagged agriculture, cash, design ethnography, exploratory user research, gem, informal economy, pay as you go, prepaid economy, rural economy, user research | Leave a comment

The rural mobile economy is prepaid.

By Niti Bhan | Published: April 6, 2013

With Radheshyam Meena, Farmer in January 2009 I began the New Year of 2009 in the midst of prototyping my fieldwork protocol for the Prepaid Economy project which had just won one of 9 Small Grants offered in competition by the iBoP Asia Project in The Philippines. India’s familiarity was the reason for its choice […]

Posted in Base of the Pyramid, Ecosystem, Indigenous & Traditional, Perspective, Prepaid Economy & Informal Sector | Tagged farmers | Leave a comment

Interim project report: User centered Agricultural value chain development

By Niti Bhan | Published: December 6, 2012

My colleague and project leader for the current work in The Netherlands, Bart Doorneweert has just published an excellent analysis of our workshop on user centered design for a multi stakeholder group invited by the Ministries of Economic Affairs and Foreign Affairs. Here’s a snippet: Insights on the multi-stakeholder working processWhen the break-out groups re-convened […]

Posted in Africa, Base of the Pyramid, Consumer Behaviour, Ecosystem, Indigenous & Traditional, Informal & Flexible, Innovation Planning, Perspective, Prepaid Economy & Informal Sector, Process, Projects and Reports, Research, Rural Economy, Sub Saharan Africa, UCSD, User research | Also tagged agriculture, international development, last mile, value chains | Leave a comment

Lessons from the Amul brand for grassroots enterprises

By Niti Bhan | Published: September 10, 2012

We also mourn the passing of Dr Verghese Kurien this weekend. The man behind India’s Operation Flood – a grassroots social enterprise based on dairy farmer’s cooperatives that grew into India’s biggest FMCG brand – Amul – while becoming the replicable model for converting India from a net milk importer to the world’s largest producer. […]

Posted in Base of the Pyramid, Business Models, Cattle, Consumer Behaviour, Culture, India, Indigenous & Traditional, Innovation Planning, Livestock, Marketing, Perspective, Prepaid Economy & Informal Sector, rural, Rural Economy, South Asia, Strategy, Value | Also tagged amul, cooperative, cooperative economy, dairy, grassroots, milk, social enterprise | Leave a comment