Dr Rieko Shibata is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of International Development. She has worked for over 20 years in various bilateral and multilateral development organisations, including JICA and UNDP. Her work has primarily focused on project and programme management in rural and agricultural development in East Africa and the Caribbean, particularly in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and Suriname. Early in her career, she lived in a coastal community in Kenya for two years, where she gained firsthand insights into local people’s perspectives and the complexities of village dynamics.
Throughout her development work, she often faced a dilemma: that a more in-depth and holistic understanding of people and society is crucial in all aspects of development to provide truly meaningful and responsible contributions to a country’s progress. “This dilemma motivated me to return to university to pursue a PhD. I conducted my research on Agricultural Innovation Systems from the perspective of farmers in Northern and Western Uganda. After completion of her PhD, she joined the University of Reading as Postdoctoral Research Associate.
Shibata is working on a project known as Digital Climate Services for Smallholder Farmers in Zambia and Malawi (E-PICSA) 2022-2024, funded by the GIZ. The purpose of this research project is to co-develop an app that supports agricultural extension workers in helping smallholder farmers make better farming decisions to cope with climate challenges. The Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA) approach, developed by Professor Peter Dorward and Dr Graham Clarkson from our department, has been proven successful in over 30 countries globally. E-PICSA is a new initiative that aims to implement the PICSA approach through a digital tool and digital empowerment for extension workers. She has been involved in E-PICSA since 2022, working as part of a small research team.
“Through this project, we piloted the initiative in four districts in Zambia and Malawi, training 130 government and non-government extension workers who subsequently trained over 16,000 farmers over the past two and a half years. With our partner organisation,IDEMS , we have built capacity within the National Met Departments to digitalise historical climate data, making it accessible to anyone who needs it, especially site-specific historical climate information that was previously unavailable, alongside timely forecasts linked with the app,” she says.
“In the extended phase of this project, Preparing for scale: E-PICSA in Zambia and Malawi 2024-2025, we are scaling the initiative to the provincial and national levels, particularly in Zambia. This includes training master trainers and making the app and videos available in seven local languages. A policy brief is also in progress,”
The action research aspect of this project is my greatest motivation. First, any climate adaptation support and climate services require a deep understanding of how farmers perceive climate challenges and opportunities and how they adapt their livelihoods accordingly in everyday life. This process involves long-term adaptation pathways, including institutional coordination at all levels, as well as gender and other intersectional relations and power dynamics. Learning about these complexities is fascinating to me.”
“I also appreciate the impact-oriented approach of our research. During my PhD studies, I learned the importance of ensuring that the extension or innovation support systems are diverse and inclusive, particularly taking gender and intersectional differences into account. Traditional systems often follow a top-down, linear technology transfer model, whereas the PICSA approach is farmer-centred and considers the options based on the local contexts. It is incredibly interesting to explore how this approach can influence or interact with existing extension policies and practices.”
“Furthermore, the current knowledge gap is a key motivator for my research. While digitalisation has boomed across various sectors, limited research has focused on unequal access to digital devices and information. Gender must be considered when promoting digital technologies, so they don’t exacerbate existing gender inequalities and can be used for empowerment. I closely collaborate with Dr. Amanda Caine on the gender and ICT aspect of this work, and I greatly enjoy doing research with her, she says.
“Through our baseline research, we found that very few farmers in the study area had access to climate information or found it useful because they did not see the direct link between their livelihoods and the information. As a result, they were unable to make practical use of it. Importantly, farmers were reacting to climate challenges, but most of their adaptation practices were reactive. It was fascinating to learn that E-PICSA promoted active information-seeking behaviour among farmers. They began using the information ahead of the season to make proactive changes, such as introducing early maturing maize varieties using the seasonal forecasts and focusing more on livestock and small off-farm businesses. This shift from reactive to proactive behaviour was a key insight for us, showing that supporting the use of climate information through contextualisation is essential,” says Shibata.
“When farmers make adaptation decisions, intra-household decision- making power -especially over enterprises, inputs and outputs- greatly affects their decisions and agency. The baseline data shows high male dominance in decision-making due to social and cultural gender norms and women’s restricted mobility. Women often wish to have more control over staple crops like maize so they can keep more for home consumption rather than selling it. They also want more freedom in how to use the profits from their own small businesses. E-PICSA has proven to be a medium for both men and women to self-reflect on gender relations, promoting more discussions between them and leading to better decisions in response to climate challenges and opportunities.”
“One of the moments I liked most in my research was an interview with a woman farmer in Kasungu district, Malawi. She attended PICSA training in late 2022, and after discussing with her husband, they decided to engage in off-farm businesses to cope with climate variability. She started a fried potato business with start-up capital borrowed from a Village Savings and Loan Association (VSLA) group and earned extra cash from piece work. Her husband started a bicycle taxi business. Through her business, she earned MWK 648,000 (approximately £300), which she used to rear local chickens, pay for antenatal care, and buy clothes for her newborn. With part of her profit, she applied fertiliser to her half-acre maize field the following season, which outperformed her neighbours’ crops. Other farmers used to rely on the government input subsidy programme, which suffered delays in supplying the inputs. Importantly, she made most of the decisions regarding her business and profits. We later filmed her testimonial, which is now available on the PICSA app,” she explained.
“One of the key lessons learned is that “technology is just an amplifier, not the main driver of social change” as Professor Tentaro Toyama writes in his book Geek Heresy. This phrase resonates with me throughout the E-PICSA implementation. While we have been training extension workers in digital skills and using the PICSA app, I have realised that e-extension is a buzz word, but its practical benefits remain largely unchallenged,” she explains.
“Many extension officers reported that they now have timely access to site-specific climate information, which was previously unavailable. The use of digital devices has also shifted from merely collecting data from farmers to supporting them with relevant information. Through platforms like WhatsApp, extension officers can share knowledge horizontally and vertically with peers and farmers. However, Toyama’s words serve as a reminder that, with or without digital tools, supportive extension workers remain supportive, while non-supportive ones will remain unhelpful, even with the digital tools,” Shibata explains.
“A more recent development in our work is the Direct-to-Farmer (D2F) app with learning videos translated into local languages. We tested the app with farmer groups whose members do not have access to smartphones. It was surprising how first-time smartphone users navigated the app and used it to set their adaptation plans for the upcoming season. Some farmer groups, particularly those that were well-organised, used group devices provided by the University of Reading to follow the PICSA steps, while other groups struggled due to less organisation. This further reinforces the idea that technology amplifies the existing dynamics within a community. The benefits of digital technology are likely influenced more by people’s agency and intentions than the technology itself,” says Shibata.
The main goal of the E-PICSA project is to help smallholder farmers make better adaptation decisions in response to climate variability and change. In 2023, Malawi was severely affected by Tropical Cyclone Freddy, causing landslides and food insecurity. The El Niño event last year also caused significant crop losses. “Despite these challenges, we observed positive impacts among the trained farmers. Our quantitative and qualitative evaluation studies in Malawi and Zambia in 2023 and 2024, as well as lean-season evaluations in 2024 and 2025, reached nearly 1,000 out of the 16,000 trained farmers. Over 90% of surveyed farmers reported making adaptive changes that improved their food security and income. Additionally, 79% of trained women farmers reported that their decision-making power within the household had improved,” she says.
“We organised learning events in Malawi and Zambia to share the experience of E-PICSA and key evaluation results. These events were attended by high-level management and technical staff from relevant Ministries, NGOs, academics, and development partners. Importantly, the successful implementation of E-PICSA in any country requires direct involvement from key government institutions, such as the Ministry of Agriculture and the Meteorological Department. Therefore, it is crucial for these institutions to have opportunities to share their achievements through E-PICSA and lead the scaling initiatives. The University of Reading, as an academic institution, can provide the scientific evidence to support and facilitate this process. We are currently preparing a policy brief to scale E-PICSA to the national level. Another GIZ project has already begun scaling E-PICSA in two additional provinces in Zambia. In Malawi, PICSA has already been integrated into their Extension Strategy, and the government’s extension department has started rolling out E-PICSA to other districts with support from UNDP.
“On the international stage, we focus on networking with regional and global academics and stakeholders. So far, we have presented our key findings from E-PICSA at various international conferences, including Development Studies Association (DSA) conference in Reading, Adaptation Futures in Montreal, and International Farming Systems Association (IFSA) conference in Italy. This year, we plan to attend the CGIAR Science Week conference in Nairobi and African Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services (AFAAS) Africa-wide Agricultural Extension Week (AAEW) in Malawi to share our E-PICSA experiences,” says Shibata.
In terms of the challenges, Shibata says the PICSA/E-PICSA approach is influenced by existing institutional structures at different levels, including underfunding for extension and innovation systems, a poor extension-to-farmer ratio, as well as gender inequality in access to adaptive assets, such as digital devices, and intra-household decision-making power dynamics. Additionally, the initiative can be affected by limited national budgets and insufficient donor coordination. Like many other initiatives, political, social, environmental and economic factors all interact and can impact the implementation and outcomes of the project.
“These challenges drive us to keep learning and improving. As part of an academic institution, I strive to continuously learn from our experiences with a self-reflective and critical mindset, while sharing insights and feedback to inform policy and practice,” Shibata concludes.
For more on PICSA approach please visit: Participartory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture