Recycled phones introduced in Tanzanian program

Recycled phones introduced in Tanzanian program

As part of our re-greening project in Tanzania, we handed out smartphones to our 240 Kisiki Hai facilitators in the Kongwa district.

It will help them to track the progress their fellow farmers are making and to see how much land already has been restored. And the great thing is: all the facilitators give the phone a second life, because they originally come from the Dutch Railway Company NS. This is made possible by the organization Closing the Loop. A smart way to use used smartphones right?!

Monitoring and evaluation

The use of smartphones is a valuable addition to our monitoring and evaluation of the program. Thanks to an app, we can collect the necessary data to track how all farmers are taking up the Kisiki Hai method (also called “Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration” (FMNR)) and how many trees are being regenerated using this technique. Njamasi Chiwanga, partner LEAD Foundation:

“The smartphones, while simplifying communication among our team of hundreds of community facilitators, will also be used in our monitoring and evaluation track whereby we’ll be able to monitor real time progress and photos of trees in the villages using the Kobotool app.”

Closing the Loop and NS

We got in contact with Closing the Loop (CTL), a great organization that recycles used smartphones and thereby make the use of phones more sustainable and even ‘circular’. They were fortunate enough to work on a big phone disposal project in The Netherlands: that of the Dutch Railways (NS). Phones that no longer live up to corporate needs, but – with a simple upgrade – can be easily reused for new purposes like the Justdiggit projects!