What would you do if you had developed an amazing mobile phone application with practical information that people could use to improve their quality of life? How would you spread the word and encourage people to use it? Now what if you had specifically developed your app for farmers living in rural Nepal, where women have limited access to technology? Posting to social media wouldn’t be effective. Old-fashioned person-to-person word-of-mouth contact works the best; it’s just a matter of finding the right people to spread the word.

This is a lesson USAID’s WomenConnect Challenge (WCC) learned in Nepal. From 2017 to 2021, the WCC project offered grants to organizations to close the gender digital divide around the world and allow more women to benefit from digital technology. One WCC grantee, Heifer International, partnered with Nepali tech firm Pathway Technologies to scale up an app called GeoKrishi, which provides information on crops and livestock, weather forecasts and market prices, and allows farmers to send pictures and questions to experts for quick turnaround advice.