ABALOBI and partners Blue Ventures traveled to Anjouan, Comoros, to test and refine the mobile monitoring app alongside the Comorian NGO Dahari. The MONITOR app is used to log the catches of women fishers in fishing communities.

Field Visits and Initial Testing

Following several months of development and remote engagement, ABALOBI and Blue Ventures team members, along with Dahari, visited a Comorian fishing community to test the app with three community monitors. The monitors found the new tool easy to use and convenient, as it allowed them to log not only the fishers’ catches but also their own daily progress.

After completing one day of logging with the new tool, one of the monitors excitedly reported back the number of logs they were able to make. This was a good indication that the design of the app was a success. A cornerstone of this successful deployment and uptake of the MONITOR app was the collaborative co-design approach of the project.

Feedback on Data Visualisations

The second key outcome of the visit to Comoros was to test and gain feedback on data visualisations that would be used by fishers, community monitors, and program managers. ABALOBI and Blue Ventures conducted sessions with Dahari staff to gather their feedback and suggestions on the visualisations. The team also met with fishers to gather feedback and insights during a meeting attended by over twenty male and female fishers. For example, one fisher commented that he preferred to see the amount of octopus caught separately from the amount of other species harvested, as this aligned with how fishers were trained to read graphs in previously conducted data literacy workshops.

Understanding and Integration

The time spent in Comoros, testing the mobile MONITOR app and gathering feedback on the data visualisations with Dahari and community members, enabled ABALOBI to better understand the local context and incorporate new learnings into the development of the tools.

Read more about the experience here!