Dramatically increased accessibility and decreased cost-per-person impacts are needed for scaling IPM in Africa

Abstract

While traditional scaling for integrated pest management (IPM) in Africa requires the movement of expert trainers from village to village, these efforts are often costly, time-inefficient, hampered by distance, and became impossible under COVID-19's movement restrictions (despite tremendously increased public need for IPM-scaling knowledge). One solution to this dilemma is IPM-scaling, usable by a diversity of development actors expending limited or few resources, to deliver critical information to large numbers of people with systems-approach information and communication technologies. This paper describes one such systems-approach scaling platform, Scientific Animations Without Borders, which effectively elicited end-user solution-adoption and decreased unit costs over increasing scales in three African countries during COVID-19. How to scale game-changing IPM insights 'off the shelf' and 'into people's hands in the field' is also discussed.