IN THE tiny village of Lagude on the wide open plains of northern Uganda, farmers live in constant fear of crop failure. It’s a very real fear: since last summer, the food crisis in east Africa, caused by the worst drought in 60 years, has left 50,000-100,000 people dead, according to recent estimates, and has affected up to 10 million people.

Farming in this part of Africa is a fragile endeavour, but in Uganda a promising new initiative is helping farmers in remote areas such as Lagude safeguard their livelihoods against crop disease and drought.

The microfinance organisation Grameen Foundation has been leasing smartphones to so-called “community knowledge workers” (CKWs) in 10 districts around Uganda so that they can receive vital information – weather reports, disease diagnostics, market prices – from a central database in Kampala and pass it on to their neighbours.

They also gather information that Grameen then relays to major agricultural organisations and food programmes.

In Lagude, Simon Obwoya, a local farmer who was recruited as a CKW in October 2010 and earns an average of $20 (€15) a month through the programme, says the information he has received from Grameen is making a real difference. “We were warned there was going to be a long drought, so many of our farmers took their time before putting down their seeds and were able to save .”

The CKW programme is just one example of how mobile phones are revolutionising lives in Africa. There are now more than 500 million handsets in use across the continent. In Uganda alone, 10 million people, or about 30 per cent of the population, own mobile phones and are using them in strikingly innovative ways. Mobile banking, for instance, is commonplace and millions of Ugandans pay bills via text message or store money on their phones.

However, in a country in which a third of the adult population cannot read or write, a digital divide persists. The CKW scheme is addressing this problem by training operatives such as Mr Obwoya to use phones for entrepreneurial as well as social purposes.

By creating an information flow between economic centres and out-of-the-way places such as Lagude, Grameen is not only helping to protect local farmers against the ravages of famine: it is also bringing them into the global marketplace and giving them the tools to navigate it.

* This article was produced with support from the Simon Cumber Media Fund