This brief focuses on the quantitative impact evaluation in Ghana, led by IFPRI; a key component of the mNutrition impact evaluation. The service to be delivered and evaluated is the ‘Vodafone Farmer Club’. The service is a bundled solution offering agricultural and nutrition information via voice messages, SMS, and a Farmer’s Helpline.
Agriculture messages are composed of weekly price information, daily weather information, and farming tips, sent three times per month. Nutrition messages are sent one per month with the possibility of increasing to three per month. The evaluation will test whether this approach to making this mobile-phone based agricultural intervention more nutrition sensitive will improve household diets and nutrition.
mNutrition is a global initiative that uses mobile phone technology and mobile phone based behaviour change messages to improve the health and nutritional status of children and adults in the developing world. mNutrition is supported by DFID, organised by GSMA, and implemented by in-country mobile network operators (MNOs) in many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and South East Asia. The evaluation of the mNutrition initiative is being led by the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) together with GAMOS and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) as part of the e-Pact consortium led by Oxford Policy Management (OPM), co-managed with Itad.