Toolkit for Inclusive AgriTech Digital Solution Design

USAID (2024) Toolkit for Inclusive AgriTech Digital Solution Design #107 p.

• This toolkit provides guidance to USAID staff and implementing partners on how to design inclusive digital technology interventions in Feed the Future activities. It emphasizes support for marginalized groups, intersectionality, and robust local engagement. By prioritizing these factors, the toolkit guides users in fostering positive outcomes in alignment with USAID’s locally led development vision.

Where, and how digital technologies that are deployed in Feed the Future (FTF) activities are designed, developed, and tested – and by whom – significantly impacts how relevant, accessible, usable, and valuable they might be for participants, from agricultural producers to input suppliers. If the people they are designed for do not have a stake in how they are developed or how they are governed and deployed, there is a greater chance that the tools will not be used as intended. 

There are myriad ways in which factors related to, for example, accessibility, usability, and real life usage, affect both users and digital technologies. This inevitably results in a situation where certain groups of farmers are more likely to benefit from digital tools than others. 

• For instance, landowning men who are digitally literate are likely to be better placed to benefit from the multiplying potential of digital tools than, say, a landless woman with minimal literacy and little access to, or experience with, digital tools. 
• Thus, some people are in a more advantaged position than others. Without adequate planning and mitigation, digital tools can perpetuate and even worsen existing inequities and inequalities. 
• In short, without due care and consideration for digital inclusion, digital tools may multiply benefits for those already in privileged positions. Simultaneously, the adverse effects for those left behind may multiply. 

Planning on using existing digital technology:

1. Understand that potential users have complex realities that alter their ability to use, engage with, and benefit from digital tools. 
2. Overcome the digital divides of access, digital literacy, and offline benefit1 through inclusive digital design and program activities. 
3. Utilize a Digital Inclusion Framework to assess and iteratively improve digital inclusion efforts.

Content

1. New to digital inclusion? Start with Module 1 and move through the toolkit in sequence to build your depth of understanding and practice. 
2. Eager to understand intersectionality? Familiarize yourself with the key terms and definitions that make up intersectionality and then learn how to bring an intersectional lens to digital development work. Familiar with social inclusion but new to technological design processes? Start with Module 2 to learn about how digital solutions get made from ideation to testing.
3. Want to incorporate a digital intervention into a current or upcoming activity? Head to Module 3 to learn how to incorporate inclusive programming. 
4. Learn best from examples? Head to Module 4 where you can see digital inclusion in action. 
5. Only have a few minutes? Check out the key takeaways at the end of Modules 1, 2, 3 and then use the jump