Many African leaders are working to elevate their countries to knowledge-based economies, however, the current dependence on agriculture can’t be ignored. In most cases, more than 40% of the country’s income comes from agriculture. In an effort to empower farmers with information, Esoko, found an opportunity in the increased saturation of mobile phones. The initiative utilizes mobile phones (SMS based) and computers (Internet based) to communicate daily commodity pricing, as well as quantities to farmers in Ghana, Mali,
Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Sudan, Mozambique, Madagascar and Malawi.
The platform pulls market information from users and agents that upload daily data through computers. Once that information is available, the platform then pushes this information through SMS to farmers based on previously specified alerts*.
In addition, this information is easily searchable on the online application. With such small margins on commodity items, a farmers business can often be hurt by a middleman. This service empowers farmers with market knowledge to make better informed decisions, and at the same time eliminate the middleman. A helpful feature of the system is a library/resources area where individuals can locate news content and weather information.
One major challenge of using esoko is literacy, many of these farmers may know how to use a simple cell-phone to make calls but may not know how to read. This is a challenge both in taking advantage of the SMS pushes and the online resources. Also some of the esoko applications, like mapping prices and quantities of a commodity on a cell-phone are too sophisticated for the regular farmer's phone. Indeed the company is developing them for smartphones such as Android (read a story about a developer here). Instead they are better used by government and tracking agencies.
This program is possible in the countries listed above through partnerships with IFDC, FAO, IFAD, Technoserve, USAID, MTN, ZAIN, Sudani.
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*mobile alerts can be setup for individuals, groups, or for entire Networks. You can specify days, markets and commodities to receive prices from, or commodities and locations from which you'd like to receive offers
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