Mali’s mango industry is dominated by small-scale farmers, mostly women, who live and work in the rural areas. The mango producers sell their produce, which consists of mangos and a number of by-products such as mango juice, mango jam and dried mangos, at the local market. The mango producers who attended the two ICT training sessions came from villages close to Sikasso. Many of them are members of an organisation called Sene Kunafoni Bulon which represents their interests. The men who work in the mango industry generally earn more as they tend to work at the organisational level. This is because women often lack the educational levels needed to perform certain organisational tasks.

To ensure that the training sessions can be replicated all over the region on a regular basis, a female representative from Sene Kunafoni Bulon, together with a male colleague, was trained as a ‘trainer’. Both are now able to deliver training courses on demand. However, issues such as Internet fraud, viruses and spam still have to be addressed in the training sessions.

The mango producers who participated in the training sessions are now confident enough to use the Internet to search for market price information, find new markets for their produce - both at home and abroad, and locate information about best farming practices. One other unexpected benefit that came out of the training sessions is that the courses brought large numbers of women farmers from neighbouring villages together and enabled them to share their experiences with each other.  As women often make a key contribution to their families’ income it has been estimated that over 750 people from villages in and around Sikasso will benefit indirectly from the ICT training sessions in the long term. 

The activities described above are also taking place elsewhere in Mali with women from the Shea Butter industry. They too are being trained to use computers and the Internet through an IICD-supported project called ‘Kari and ICT’. This project, which has been developed by two local organisations - the Malian Association for the Promotion of Youth (AMPJ) and the Zantiébougou Women Shea Producers Cooperative (COPROKAZAN) – also found that holding ICT training sessions in Bambara, the local language, is more effective as most rural farmers only speak elementary French.