Mobile My.COOP has its first client already: Nigeria!

Last week the ITC welcomed 2 delegates from Nigeria who are interested in working with the ILO to deliver up-to-date agricultural cooperative training in their country. They reported that the original MATCOM training was very popular there, but it has become very dated, and the users are looking forward to new material. Tom and I met with them to discuss the possibility of integrating mobile phones into the new My.COOP training system, and they loved the idea!

They told us that in Nigeria there is a lack of infrastructure that makes connectivity difficult. On one hand, internet connectivity is a problem, coupled with access to computers and electricity. But another issue is travelling from A to B - when there is a lack of digital connectivity then it often becomes necessary for inhabitants to make long journeys between towns and villages in order to communicate and interact. Especially in rural contexts, this means that people lose a lot of time and money, because in Nigeria villages are often spread very far apart.

However, the mobile phone is very diffused and there is great potential to create new systems around this object that deliver training directly to the users and link them up with other actors in the system, allowing them to experience the more interactive and even social elements of a F2F training experience at a distance.

My.COOP is a training project for regions all over the world, but to pilot the system it makes sense to focus in on one context and prototype how the learning experience can be adapted to the specific needs of that area. The delegates were keen to explore how the standardised My.COOP material could be related to the Nigerian context. Perhaps the mobile elements could become a tool for "customising" the standard printed material in different regions, for example through storytelling of local case studies?

As a large country Nigeria also presents its own specific technical challenges for the pilot and I think this is very healthy for the project. As one of the delegates said, "if you can make it work for Nigeria, you can make it work for any African country!"